03 Magazine: September 01, 2023

Feature | Magazine 45
“I feel like I’m not 100 percent safe at sea because you have to really
understand the elements, the weather, what you are doing, but I still have a
sense of peace, a sense of unknowing, a sense of exploration.”
Up painting until nearly midnight in the cabin of an ocean
ship, Cora-Allan Lafaiki Twiss spreads out her day’s
paintings to dry on every flat space – even her bed.
The only clear surface left to sleep on is the couch, so she
curls up on it for a few hours’ sleep.
She’s on the Heritage Adventurer as it travels up New
Zealand for two weeks visiting heritage sites explored by
Captain James Cook on the Endeavour.
“I wanted to visit important sites to our narrative in
Aotearoa,” she says.
Cora-Allan (Ngāpuhi, Ngātitumutumu, Niue: Alofi, Liku)
doesn’t want to miss a moment of the experience, even if the
sometimes rocky trip created some creative challenges.
“I enjoy working on a boat, I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
The enjoyment of working on the water is something Cora-
Allan only recently discovered. In 2021 she was selected for
the Parehuia residency in Titirangi, Auckland, hosted by the
McCahon House Trust.
She decided, like McCahon, to take her studio to the water.
So she bought a little boat and got her skipper’s licence.
“The experience of being a boatie, I’m absolutely addicted
to,” she says.
“I feel like I’m not 100 percent safe at sea because you have
to really understand the elements, the weather, what you are
doing, but I still have a sense of peace, a sense of unknowing, a
sense of exploration.”
Her next trip, travelling up New Zealand’s coast, was
“way more” than she could have expected as it has led to
a first for the artist – being able to combine elements of
both her Māori and Niuean whakapapa – using traditional
hiapo (decorated bark cloth) from Niue and Māori painting
techniques using pigments from the whenua (land) in her
exhibition Encountering Aotearoa.
“They have been able to collide in this show, meet in
one space. The show itself heavily features the whenua, the
landscape. It has been a real exploration for myself of what it
means to be Māori and Niuean from the Pacific, to create and
look at whenua, the place I live in, the way of experiencing it
differently through this continuous trip around the coastline.”
She travelled from south to north following in the footsteps
of the botanists and artists on board the Endeavour during
its maiden voyage in 1769, in particular Tupaia, a Tahitian
navigator on the boat who had with him on the trip a young
family member, Taiata.
In an echo of this, Cora-Allan asked her Niuean father
along, as her assistant. The pair are very close and her
father often joins the family on arts residencies and
research projects.
“Having my dad there to accompany me but also to get his
perspective of the trip was really interesting. He doesn’t come
from an arts background but the knowledge of his generation
living in Aotearoa allowed him to experience it differently.
“It was really good to get a frame of reference from what
he had learnt in school and what I had learnt.”
As Cora-Allan tends to work from 5am to midnight, having
someone to make her a cup of tea or just be there means a lot.
“He’s a really good buddy to be honest. Just hearing his
snoring in the corner is comforting. Working as an artist can
be very isolating so having a whānau member on board makes
it more whole.”
It is also a reflection of the journey she and her father have
been on. Growing up in West Auckland with four siblings in a
three-bedroom house, the emphasis was on earning enough
to feed the family.
“I didn’t grow up in a household where art was a thing. For
myself it was a very different world. My parents had never
been to university – I was the first in my family to do so.”
Cora-Allan forged her own path to be an artist, getting
a scholarship to AUT at 17, enrolling without her family’s
knowledge. Over the years as her practice has grown and her
work has sold, her father has come around.
“Now they’re really on board as they’re able to see the
capacity of my dreams. My dad makes all my tools for my
traditional hiapo practice and my sister is always there. We all
kind of play roles, it’s not a singular practice, it’s one the whole
family loves as they get to see one of us succeed.”
Her father also created journals while on the boat,
reflecting on the research he did on historical marine journals
and the stories of mariners such as Sir Peter Blake.
While the history shared aboard was from a Pākehā
perspective, Cora-Allan and her father were able to add their
knowledge to the mix.