Hine Hakirirangi

HINE HAKIRIRANGI: This striking design, mounted above a shared gateway in Gladstone Road, is a magnified detail from a work by Aotearoa 666 graphic designer Melanie Tahata. Tahata extracted the detail from the centre of a logo based on a moko kauae for the 2013 iwi exhibition, Toi Tamanuhiri.

THE artwork is fixed above Tamanuhiri Tutu Poporo and Te Puni Kokiri House’s carpark entrance to the refurbished building on the Gladstone Road-Derby Street corner.

“That part of the design represents the Horouta waka. They say the waka is buried at Te Wherowhero Lagoon at Muriwa," said artist Melanie Tahata.

“The design is in the middle of a moko kauae (chin moko) and specifically represents a female ancestor, Hine Hakirirangi. She came over on the Hourouta waka and brought the kumara with her. She named Oneroa Bay because she walked it.”

The work above the gateway is made up of 10 pieces but the line is not so much broken as virtual in the spaces between the physical forms.