City Gallery Visit Whakapapa- Our Stories

As  part of our Inquiry- Whakapapa: Our Stories, we visited the City Gallery. We learned about our connection to the Johnson Witehira mural ‘Ngā Kākano The Seeds’ (near Te Ngākau Civic Square) and created artworks based on our pepeha.

The City Gallery education team taught about the story behind the mural: the whakapapa of Taraika who Whāngahui-a-Tara (the great harbour of Tara- Wellington) is named after. He was a chief who descended from the great navigator Whatonga who sailed to Aotearoa in Kurahaupō Waka.

Some of us use Whānaganui-a-Tara in our pepeha as our moana (ocean) because it is our harbour too, so now we can make the connection between our story and Taraika.

After discussing how the different art elements (ideas) in the artwork, we headed to the gallery's classroom to create screen prints of our pepeha.

You can pop in to Tautoru to see all our finished art works.

It was wonderful to notice and learn about how the art around our city is connected to our personal stories. We hope we can keep spotting art all around and find new links to how art can fit into our lives.