On campus exhibition: History Unravelling
William Dunning
John Bevan Ford
Marian Maguire
Shona Rapira-Davies
Barbara Tuck
Selected works from Ngā Puhipuhi o Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection
17 August – 03 November 2025
Open 7.30am - 3.30pm, Monday to Friday
Rutherford House,
Pipitea Campus, Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington,
33 Bunny St, Wellington.
History Unravelling brings together a selection of works from Ngā Puhipuhi o Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection which all touch in different ways on the legacies of colonisation in Aotearoa. These works encourage us to pull at threads from the tangled fabric of historical record, to think about how colonisation has and continues to inflect our stories, and to impact on the land. Layered with references, the titles of these works provide important poetic cues for reading them. An impossible bouquet of delicate weeds on rust coloured freshly turned earth is paired with a lament in Shona Rapira-Davies’s Ka pinea koe e ahau. Ki te pine o te aroha. Ki te pine e kore nei. E waikura e. A lament (2011). Barbara Tuck’s ghostly figures are embedded in the lush green landscape of Ngā Uruora (2021), in a homage to the ecological loss described in Geoff Park’s 1995 text of the same name. Greek god Herakles is depicted struggling to tame the “new” world in Marian Maguire’s print series The Labours of Herakles (2007). William Dunning’s idiosyncratic works combine grim facts and figures lifted onto pedestals, memorialising the harms of colonisation while in John Bevan Ford’s Te Awhi Ki Ruahine (1988) an intricate cloak drawn in coloured pen hovers over the landscape offering a protective embrace. These works explore both personal and political histories, and address sobering realities; they grieve, while at the same time asserting enduring and immutable relationships to this whenua.
This exhibition has been curated by Kaiwhakarākei, Curator Collections, Sophie Thorn.
Installation view, History Unravelling, Rutherford House, Pipitea Campus, Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2025. Photo: Ted Whitaker.
Barbara Tuck, Ngā Uruora, 2022, oil on board, Ngā Puhipuhi o Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection, purchased 2023.
John Bevan Ford (b. 1930, d. 2005, Ngāti Raukawa), Te Awhi Ki Ruahine, 1988, coloured pen and ink with incising on paper. Ngā Puhipuhi o Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection, purchased 1988.
Marian Maguire, Herakles dreams of Arcadia, plate 7 from 'The Labours of Herakles', 2007, colour lithograph, Ngā Puhipuhi o Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection, purchased 2010.
Marian Maguire, Athena is dismayed at the lack of progress Herakles has made towards Arcadia, plate 10 from 'The Labours of Herakles', 2007, colour lithograph, Ngā Puhipuhi o Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection, purchased 2010.
Shona Rapira-Davies (Ngāti Wai),Ka pinea koe e ahau. Ki te pine o te aroha. Ki te pine e kore nei. E waikura e. A lament. 2011, oil on board, Ngā Puhipuhio Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection, purchased2011.
William Dunning, Back to back, Edward Wakefield/Māori couple, 1850, 1994, charcoal & acrylic wash on paper, Ngā Puhipuhi o Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection, purchased 1994.
William Dunning, Māori population hits bottom figure of 42,113; 1886, 1994, charcoal & acrylic wash on paper, Ngā Puhipuhi o Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection, purchased 1994.
Installation view, History Unravelling, Rutherford House, Pipitea Campus, Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2025. Photo: Ted Whitaker.