Nature: Mana, majesty & mayhem
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Other Title
Authors
Groves, Karlene
Author ORCID Profiles (clickable)
Degree
Master of Creative Practice
Grantor
Unitec, Te Pūkenga – New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology
Date
2024
Supervisors
Macdonald, Alan
White, Tanya
White, Tanya
Type
Masters Thesis
Ngā Upoko Tukutuku (Māori subject headings)
Keyword
Te Auaunga/Oakley Creek (Auckland, N.Z.)
Te Noho Kotahitanga (Unitec Institute of Technology
Mount Albert (Auckland, N.Z.)
Auckland (N.Z.)
Aotearoa
New Zealand
rivers
photography
climate change and art
place-based knowledge
mātauranga ā-rohe
creative practice in cultural identity
Te Noho Kotahitanga (Unitec Institute of Technology
Mount Albert (Auckland, N.Z.)
Auckland (N.Z.)
Aotearoa
New Zealand
rivers
photography
climate change and art
place-based knowledge
mātauranga ā-rohe
creative practice in cultural identity
Citation
Groves, K. (2024). Nature: Mana, majesty & mayhem (Unpublished document submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Creative Practice). Unitec, Te Pūkenga - New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology https://hdl.handle.net/10652/6647
Abstract
RESEARCH QUESTION
In the age of the Anthropocene, how can a contemporary photographic practice evoke an appreciation of te taiao through the interconnectedness of kaitiakitanga and whanaungatanga?
ABSTRACT
Within this Master of Creative Practice photographic Project, I endeavor to evoke an appreciation for Te Taiao/the natural environment within the age of the Anthropocene. This objective I have enveloped within Te Ao Māori whereby humankind is co-existent with te taiao within Ranginui and Papatūānuku whereby there are ‘...inbuilt obligations that the individual feels towards his/her Divine Parents and the way s/he should act with and inter-relate to everything that has been created’ (Pere, 1991, p26). The interrelatedness between tangata and te taiao is one of respect and adhering to due reciprocation (Keenan, 2012, p. 36) and reverence within the care and duty of kaitiakitanga. Moreover, kaitiakitanga operates within whanaungatanga as an expression of collective environmental consciousness.
Within my work, kaitiakitanga is portrayed as an engagement within whanaungatanga as it occurs in the local rohe or, as I have transcribed and a term I have coined within this project, as an adoptive or localised whakapapa. The locations I have focused on within the local environment and community are Te Waiunuroa o Wairaka, Rangimarie Pā Harakeke, Te Auauanga/Oakley Creek, and the Whau River. The focus on a local vicinity is an antithetical response to some of the widespread damage of an Anthropocentric worldview that has antagonised a kaitiakitanga sensibility that places an intrinsic interdependence on the natural environment.
Within my photographic narrative, I have sought to photograph a perspective of te taiao in a state of transitory flux within the climate crisis, the impending Anthropocene. I have encapsulated this shifting state with a visual representation of the Mana, the Majesty, and the Mayhem of Nature. The production of this narrative has been a journey of both documentation and a more subjective visualisation. Establishing my tūrangawaewae has also been a journey. I have established a sensibility of responsiveness toward the whenua within my photography, which, for me, is a form of kaitiakitanga. It is a multifaceted analogue record of the incremental shifts and the more volatile reactions of nature under extreme pressure. I aim to record the natural environment within the expressions of a form of realism and alongside subjectivity as a signification that our personal choices affect the greater good. 1
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