Seminar 2 Autumn/April 2025

The Great Piako Swamp

I am exploring the loss and devastation of land, focusing on the Piako Swamp in the Hauraki Plains, and the disappearance of the ancient kahikatea forest that once thrived there.

Once the country’s largest wetland, the Piako Swamp was of immense significance to Māori, who valued it as a mahinga kai - an essential source of food and resources - and regarded wetlands as highly productive and sustainably managed taonga. In contrast, Pākehā colonists and settlers viewed wetlands as unproductive, unhealthy wastelands to be drained and repurposed for agriculture.

How a modern dredge operates
Piako river mud and watercolour on Fabriano paper

From the wilds of the swamp to the fullness of the earth
Piako river mud and watercolour on Fabriano paper

An important undertaking
Piako river mud, charcoal and watercolour on Fabriano paper

One of the big main drains of the Piako Swamp
Piako river mud and watercolour on Fabriano paper

Stripping and sluicing away the peat
Piako river mud and watercolour on Fabriano paper

A Priestman dredge at work
Piako river mud and watercolour on Fabriano paper

Draining the Hauraki Plains
Piako river mud and watercolour on Fabriano paper

Men labouring on the Maukororo Canal
Piako river mud and watercolour on Fabriano paper

My grandmother and my father making a path
Piako river mud and watercolour on Fabriano paper

My grandfather and his dog
Piako river mud and watercolour on Fabriano paper

Workers stripping peat
Fertiliser and watercolour on Fabriano paper

Crit Response

#1
Julie's notes >

I was pleased with the comments, as it seemed that the group received the paintings as history (documentation), as memory. Especially pleased with this comment: "the machinery works are gritty, political, and industrial in context".

#2
Julie's notes >

For this crit, I clipped two of the figurative images (one of workers, and one of family) to a large horizon painting (empty of people and machinery).

 

A transformation of the land, deforestation. Semiotics - the nothingness, the lack of things there. The machinery - humans have been here, could think just horizon lines but the machinery feels like man has been there and there is loss.
Silt - a feeling of sadness, there's an emotional state - the way the images appear on the page, a dreariness.
Signs of cultivated land, gorged tracks, people are making the tracks, the little moments that clinch the deal (the spade).
Water/land/political - Pakeha guilt, rethinking histories.

Again, I was very pleased with these comments - the placement of the figurative paintings together with one of devastation worked well.

The almost empty paintings with a dug canal and a piece of machinery told a good strong story - plus the empty paintings clipped with the figurative paintings.