Kauae Raro Research Collective

A Kauae Raro Research Collective Manifesto brought forth after a cup of tea with cousins

Kenepuru | Muddied Thing

Lanae has kicked off her rangahau today at Iramoko Marae with Dr. Pouroto Ngaropo.

Pouroto shared about the importance of the kauae runga and cosmologies when talking about kōkōwai, and his experiences with kōiwi tīpuna. Ngā mihi NUI.

This rangahau is supported through a Royal Society Te Apārangi Skinner Fund grant awarded to Lanae for her project, The Painted Dead: Ka Pania ngā Kōiwi, Ka Hoki ki te Whenua. With support from Dr. Charlotte King from the University of Otago, the research brings together mātauranga shared by Māori practitioners alongside archaeological evidence to explore the use of kōkōwai in Māori death practices.

Lanae is currently connecting with practitioners and pūkenga who may wish to contribute to this kaupapa. If you are open to having a kōrero, please send us a DM or email [email protected].

Kauae Raro be like, “we really needed this” - and it’s literally just prehistoric painting techniques 4 leisure in the wharekai.

Hope your Pātaka is stocked for the cyclone x

lives Yállabirrang Naarm, (Melbourne) is an artist of mixed Koorie and European descent.

His recent paintings bring together minimal serial abstraction with familial narrative and institutional critique especially as are conveyed by materials and material histories.

We loved the use of ochre in these pieces, the colours (lilac earth?!) and textures on unconventional materials they lay upon. These works are currently being exhibited at as a part of ‘Essential Oils’ with Tyrone Te Waa.

Only You 2025
ochre and acrylic binder on removalist felt
610 x 820mm

Kissy 2025
ochre and acrylic binder on Brucks Wangaratta jellybean camouflage
1020 x 1980mm

Untitled 2025
ochre and acrylic binder on riot shield
660mm diameter

Lehuauakea is a Native Hawaiian (Kanaka ʻŌiwi) interdisciplinary artist and barkcloth-maker who works with ancestral organic materials in contemporary ways to highlight narratives of Indigenous environmental stewardship, an evolving Kanaka ʻŌiwi identity, and the teachings held in cultural mythologies and cosmologies. By building a personal relationship with traditional techniques and materiality, Lehuauakea breathes new life into pattern symbolism used for generations and preserves cultural memory rooted in place-based practices.

Grounded by ancestral modality while advancing the medium to unconventional, innovative, and tactile forms, including hand-stitched mixed-media textiles, large-scale installation, and earth pigment paintings on kapa, Lehuauakea builds on these cultural knowledge systems, ensuring the perpetuation of these modes of Indigenous storytelling.

Since 2018, Lehuauakea has apprenticed under well-known barkcloth maker Wesley Sen, who trained in barkcloth-making alongside practitioners including Puanani Van Dorpe, Beatrice Krauss, Malia Solomon, Carla Freitas, Dennis Kanaʻe, and Mary Pritchard.

I don’t usually mix different pigments, but when do, it’s for a purpose.

Who is mixing with where and why?

Here’s a quick pic of my tino fave earths coming together to travel with me. A protective bunch that I reach for when I’m far away from home.

x Sarah

Ashleigh Zimmerman (Kai Tahu) - Is an artist and art educator based in Whangārei. Ashleigh’s lens-based practice intersects with whenua and uku, exploring her relationship to Papatūānuku and her identity as a wahine Māori.

Through light painting and elemental imagery, her mahi sits within Te Kore, holding space for vulnerability, mamae, and tinana sovereignty. Developed during her Master of Māori Visual Art at (Massey University), Ashleigh’s work engages whakapapa, whare ngaro, and infertility as lived experience - working to whakanoa wāhine narratives often left unspoken.

In Ngā Whakaahua o Te Whare Ngaro, kōkōwai from Kurawaka becomes a powerful red chromatic language - dust, lava, blood, sacred waters - speaking to broken lineage, absence, and the voids where whakapapa cannot continue. These images act as arapaki, forming a whare without poupou, without tūpuna, yet heavy with ihi and meaning.

We’re so grateful to for sharing this deeply considered and generous kaupapa with our Kauae Raro whānau.

Girls be like “I needed this” and it’s literally just embodying their ancestors 💅🏽