Style: July 01, 2022

Style | Art 69
Standing in front of a petrograph, a carved rock wall,
featuring a lot of different waka, Sarah realised many people
of differing ages had added to it.
After visiting other sites, they headed home and on that
journey Sarah had the thought that if their ancestors made
paint that could last 100 years, why did she not know how
to do that?
“It was a real gap in my knowledge base. At art school we
never talked about how paint could be made or sustainable
art practice or having a relationship with the materials you
are using.”
The trio, with their combined backgrounds in art,
pottery, whakapapa (genealogy) and Māori plant medicine,
created Kauae Raro Research Collective in 2019 to research
earth pigments and Māori uses of them and publish their
findings online. They have also held workshops for adults
and children.
“For a year, every week we went for a walk looking at
the whenua and talking to people.”
It was a pivotal point for Sarah, who before that had
mainly been working on short, project-based multimedia
projects – she studied photography – working from one
contract to the next.
“The concepts have always been the same. I’ve always
been really interested in land and tino rangatiratanga, Māori
sovereignty and agency.”
But after she discovered the earth pigments, her work
became more of a ‘real practice’, slowing down and having
a long-term focus.
“There are all these questions and I hope eventually to
get to know the answers but I’m not in any rush to know
all of the things immediately.
“Having the material be the thread alongside the kaupapa,
the concepts, has really boosted physically what I was always
trying to say conceptually, I guess.”
Her Broad Bay project is a celebration of all the
colours of the bay. Originally she had planned to survey
the whole Otago Peninsula but found enough to satisfy her
in the bay.
“It was really rich and really varied and I’ve got thousands
of colours just from Whakaohorahi (Broad Bay), it’s great.”
Place names are often a clue to what she might find
as Māori place names often hold a lot of information
– Pukekura or Taiaroa Head means red hill so it might
mean there is red soil.
“It’s a bit of a detective game. It’s a long game for colour
gathering, that as part of the practice I go for walks and touch
rocks. Some make really beautiful paint and some don’t and
what isn’t used goes back.”
The samples she digs up are crushed up by hand, using
a mortar and pestle her mother-in-law gave her, into varying
different size grains, some down to powder to be used in
fabric dyes or paints.
“Some take a lot more effort than others. Sometimes the
effort is worth it, sometimes it is not.”
There are certain colours in the Māori palette that carry
a lot of significance, in particular red, so earth with red
pigments is something she is always searching for.
“Sometimes you find a red rock, you think this is it, but
when you crack it open and inside its yellow.”
Those with the colours she is seeking are turned into paint
using natural binders such as native tree gums and honey, just
like it used to be made, so it can be returned to the land with
very little impact ecologically.
ABOVE: Whakaohorahi, 2022, Sarah Hudson. An archive of raw, processed and sculpted soil, clay and rock hand-gathered from Whakaohorahi. Photo Justin Spiers