Taki Toru

This painting/print offers the statement that mārae karanga to their manuhiri throughout Aotearoa, mauria mai ki te aroha 'bring sympathy/love to this occasion'. Taki toru 'groups of three' is a rafter pattern used in meetinghouses. It clearly indicates return voyaging was a normla practice in early proto Polynesian settlement of these islands. The sign relates to messages being sent and received between Hawaiiki and Aotearoa during the earliest settlement phases of Aotearoa up to a millenium ago.

Taki toru then is the appropriate pattern to use in relation to the wānanga 'narrative' that outlines the arrival of the kūmara. Indeed in this particular show it describes the very purpose of the Mataatua waka. The waka answered the request from Aotearoa for the supply of kūmara seed tubers.

Message sent/message received might be one way of thinking compositionally about the pattern. Behind all of this trade and re-stocking from Hawaiki - Rangiātea, Ma'uke and Rangitāhua - is the underlying goodwill and one might say aroha involved in the sharing and supplying transplanted Pacific communities. That is what one does when one gives with plants, one shares aroha.