(Te Popoto o Nga Puhi Ki Kaipara / Ngati Whatua)

Colleen Waata-Urlich is a self-taught artist who developed an interest in pottery while completing a degree at Auckland College of Education under the tutelage of Hillary Clark. She began to develop a specific M?ori voice, encouraged by Alec Musha – a M?ori potter working in the 1970s


Colleen places herself within a tradition of clay work expressed by the ancient Pacific Lapita people at least four thousand years ago. She believes that the knowledge of working with clay, as well as the memory of clay embedded within the creation story, came to New Zealand with the first Maori settlers.
 
‘Even though we didn’t have a ceramic tradition,’ Colleen says, ‘we still understood the physical properties of clay, including firing or baking, and we used clay in a number of ritualistic practices.’

Though she began with wheel-thrown work in the early 1960s, Colleen decided that her real interest lay in simple and accessible technologies that brought her closer to clay. Her work is hand-built and either wood-fired or oxidation-fired in an electric kiln.
 
Rather than carving a pattern, a technique she sees as belonging to men, Colleen paints the pattern on the work with a water-based wax-resist, then coats the surface with terra sigillata, a very fine clay mixed with water. When the work is fired, the wax burns off, leaving the lighter body of the clay showing through the red terra sigillata. Colleen sees this process as having an affinity with the custom of using kokowai (a baked and ground red clay mixed with oil) in ancient rituals.
 
Colleen makes pieces that are not only beautiful but also useful within her culture. Her waka kakano (seed pots) are functional containers, but she has decorated them with figures related to fertility and planting.  Her work is a celebration of women. Images in clay of female deities from Maori creation stories are combined with materials associated with the creative work of women - muka (flax fibre), feathers, and shells.

Ngarutoru 2003
 
Australian raku, Northland terra sigillata, seagrass, and domestic fowl feathers
 
This vessel captures the shape of sails used on the wakahourua (twin-hulled canoes) of early Polynesian navigators.

The name of this piece tells the story of a journey between Hawaiki (the original homeland) and Aotearoa (New Zealand). Ngarutoru is a reference to the three great waves that brought Kupe’s descendant Nukutawhiti in the Ngatokimatahourua canoe safely to the Hokianga Harbour. The third wave, Ngarupaewhenua, lifted the canoe over the dangerous harbour bar.