Ayesha Green, Kowhaea, 2023. Online catalogue: Folk Nationalism, City Gallery, Wellington

Ayesha Green, Kowhaea, 2023
Part of Ayesha's exhibition Folk Nationalism, City Gallery, Wellington
1 July – 15 October 2023

Ceramic, Kōkōwai glaze
63 crowns + 2AP
Various dimensions
Displayed on a custom made plinth
$1000 each* see notes on sales below

Kowhaea, which translates to Mother in English, is a work that bonds together ideas of whenua, whakapapa, imperialism, and national maternalism. 

Kowhaea is made up of 63 ceramic crowns with each crown representing a year that Queen Victoria reigned. In her 3rd year as Queen, she became a treaty partner cementing her role in the settler colonisation of New Zealand which consequently began to shape our nationhood. 

These crowns are based on the St Edward's Crown which is used in the British royal coronation ceremony. However, made from whenua and kōkōwai they embody an indigenous Māori authority over the land.

The weight of a crown made of whenua is too heavy for the head to hold making the objects themselves unable to fulfill a sovereign role, a burden too heavy to bear. In this work, Queen Victoria's reign is built and moulded on the backs of Māori whenua.

The glaze on these works is made from kōkōwai from Huriawa Pā, in the Puketeraki takiwā, Karitane, this is the same site that all of the kōkōwai Ayesha uses comes from. 

Ayesha commissioned Jess Nicholson, a Kāi Tahu ceramicist, to make the crowns. She hand-built them and made a specific kōkōwai glaze for the project. It was important for her to work with Jess in particular as they share the same iwi, which meant she would be working with kōkōwai from her own takiwā.

In the publication to accompany the exhibition Folk Nationalism, there will be three diary entries written by Jess Nicholson, Moewai Marsh, and Madison Kelly — all Kāi Tahu artists who collected the kōkōwai together. Their writing talks about collecting the kōkōwai and is supported by photographs they took of the whenua and of each other that day. The diary entry format is used to show the different perspectives in collecting whenua and is a way to locate Kowhaea to a geographical place and to show the stories which connect them to that whenua. 

Kowhaea is a reworking and a re-thinking of a work called The Origins of Table Manners which Ayesha made in 2017. This work consisted of 21 Crowns made of ceramic. Ayesha decided not to re-show this work as she instead wanted to expand the number of crowns and use the kōkōwai in a more integral way.

See the Further Reading section below for more information.

Sales notes

All 63 crowns are to be sold individually.

Limited to 10 crowns per person.

The buyer is responsible for all shipping costs — see shipping notes below for pricing.

Some of the crosses on the crowns are missing and would have been lost in the initial bisque firing. Where they are missing, Ayesha decided to leave them as they were – glazing over them to complete the work.

Works can be viewed at The City Gallery, Wellington between 2 July – 15 October 2023.

We are not taking any holds on these works.

We can not supply any more images of the works other than what is on this page.

Shipping notes and costs

These works are too delicate to be shipped or couriered with normal couriers and instead will have to be moved with art couriers or collected from Jhana Millers Gallery in Wellington after the show finishes in October.

Depending on the buyers location, shipping could be between $150 – $300 per crown, although it is our expectation that multiple crowns would have the same shipping price as one crown.

The buyer agrees to pay whatever the shipping costs are when they purchase a work,  or to collect the work after the show finishes and by the end of 2023.

Further reading

Elle-Loui August text on The Origin of Table Manners: https://jhanamillers.com/usr/documents/press/download_url/68/ayeshagreen_theoriginsoftablemanners_ellelouiaugust.pdf

Kōkōwai (red ochre):

Within Aotearoa, Pasifika and many indigenous nations this ochre the hue named kōkōwai is a significant material in visual and performative culture. For Māori, its significance is that the ochre is the blood of Rangi and Papa when they were separated – they had been in an embrace for so long they had become entwined. Tane had to cut through sinews etc., to separate them. This is a metaphorical narrative on many levels in regards to cosmology, and also the pain/suffering/sacrifice these parents undertook to allow their offspring to develop and transform. In Māori culture, to apply kōkōwai to a structure, particularly in visual culture is to render the object, artefact, structure or body ‘tapu’ i.e. charged with energy (which originates in the intangible , higher realms of reality of Te Po) therefore requiring significant attention to restriction, boundaries and respect.

Ref: https://waiwhakaiho.intercreate.org/?p=60

Whenua (land):

Ref: https://teara.govt.nz/en/papatuanuku-the-land/page-4

Further reading on earth pigment research: Kauae Raro
Ref: https://www.kauaeraro.com