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2 May – 25 October 2026

Whatu Aho Rua

This moving image artwork Whatu Aho Rua (2020) was created collaboratively by artists Emily Parr and Arielle Walker, as a love letter of sorts to homeland and tūpuna. Recordings of landscapes, memories and voices float like fabric across Te Ika a Māui, between ancestral mountains and coastlines; from the mauri of maunga Mauao to the kaha of Koro Taranaki. Time spirals and unwinds in the stitching together of kōrero tuku iho, from tides to stones. The poetic layering of sounds and imagery honours the multiplicity of the worlds we weave through; our relationship to ancestors, each other and the rich earth we depend upon.

Artist Bios

Dr. Emily Parr (Ngāi Te Rangi, Moana, Pākehā) is an artist/researcher whose moving-image practice explores relational ecologies of Te Moananui-a-Kiwa. Her recent bodies of work traverse oceans and centuries, seeking stories in archives and waters on haerenga to her ancestral homelands. Emily’s research considers responsibilities inherited through her ancestral legacies and, in particular, to her family’s collection held by museums. Emily is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the AUT Vā Moana Research Centre and a Lecturer in the School of Art + Design. She received a 2024 Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Springboard Award and 2025 Samoa House Library Research Residency.

Arielle Walker is an Aotearoa New Zealand-based artist, writer and maker, working at the intersections of her Taranaki and Scottish/Irish Pākehā whakapapa. Her recent work focuses on textile processes and poetic narratives, weaving in the spaces between to advocate for the revival, sustenance, and continued innovation of ancestral practices. Arielle is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the AUT RAU Textiles Research Centre, and her writing can be found in AUP New Poets 9 (AUP, 2023), Te Awa o Kupu (Penguin Random House, 2023), No Other Place to Stand(AUP, 2022), as well as MOTE Journal, Pūhia!, Sweet Mammalian, Lieu, and more.

Photo credit: Emily Parr

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