Karl Chitham: Making space for other artists

As the director of the Dowse Art Museum, one of the country’s leading contemporary art galleries, Karl Chitham (Ngāpuhi, Te Uriroroi) holds a privileged position in the art world. As a curator, though, his main role is to get out of the way and let other artists shine. Here he is talking to Dale about his artistic endeavours.

 

Tēnā koe, Karl. Would you be kind enough to talk about your names and some of your whānau connections and paint us a picture of the Chitham clan?

My name is Karl Chitham. I do have a middle name — it’s Jason. Not very interesting, and I don’t know where it came from. But I whakapapa through my mum’s side to Ngāpuhi in Te Tai Tokerau. We come from the beginning of the Mangakahia Valley, just out of Whangārei, at a place called Poroti. Our marae is Maungarongo, which is one of those unadorned marae that used to be an ex-army hall.

I’m not 100 percent sure where we whakapapa on my dad’s side, which is where the Chitham name comes from. My father passed away when I was quite young, and I haven’t had a lot to do with my dad’s family.

At one stage, we thought we were descended from some of the colonists in Tasmania, which I felt quite conflicted about. I’ve since found out that a great-great-grandfather was on one of the ships that came into Petone, which is not far from where I work. So there’s another connection.

I’m interested that you make note of the fact that the marae in the north weren’t carved. It’s intrigued me over the years —  I guess that’s because of Christianity, not wanting any sort of opposition spiritually. Did that disappoint you when you travelled around the country and saw that there are some ornately carved wharenui across the land, but very few in the north?

I’m incredibly fond of our wharenui regardless of whether they’re adorned or unadorned. In fact, to some degree, the sparsity of decoration makes them even more comforting when you visit them.

Where we’re from is heavily Catholic, and that influence was really strong back in the day, which is one of the reasons that we don’t have the carvings there. But I know that back home there’s been some initiatives to grow the skill base through local workshops, and we’ve had the whakairo rākau people coming through and showing people what to do.

I said before that I was conflicted by the whole idea of having ancestry in a place where the Indigenous population wasn’t treated well. It was a horrific time in Tasmania. And being of Māori descent as well, there’s a conflict that comes with that. Then I think of our wharenui called Maungarongo. It’s essentially this idea of peace and calm. And I really like that idea: that peace is embodied in the building.

A lot of marae are falling into disrepair, and ours is one. Our marae committee has been working really hard to get some renovations and redevelopment of our wharenui off the ground. On the other hand, there are a lot of us who have nostalgia for our marae as it used to be, and the idea that we might lose the wharekai, which is pretty rough and ready, because of redevelopment is a bit unsettling.

Nicely put. Being of mixed blood myself, I stand as the embodiment of our proud Māori people and the colonisers. The external conflicts that we witness in our lives play out internally for us who have this mixed-blood background. How have you come to terms with that?

I’m very fair-skinned, and growing up in a Māori family, that conflict was always there. The idea that you look different from everybody else in a Māori setting is not such an issue now because there are fair-skinned Māori popping out all over the place. But when I was growing up, there were fewer of us, and you always felt like you were a little bit different and stood out, and you had to prove yourself a little bit more.

I’ve been doing a bit of writing as part of my mahi, and one of the things I wrote about recently was using a macron. I don’t have te reo. I’ve tried many times over the years to learn the language, and it just hasn’t stuck. But one of the things that I really hold on to is the ability to put a macron where I know a macron goes. I know a lot of native speakers are derisive of the macron, because it’s a colonial imposition. It’s something that’s been given to us and has been enforced in our language, but for those of us who don’t have the language, it feels like something that we have some agency over.

And while I was writing that essay, I was thinking that, actually, the issue isn’t about whether I have the language or whether I’m brown or not brown. The issue is about whether I feel comfortable in myself within my culture. I can be Māori, and I can look the way I look, and I can have the skills that I have, and I don’t have to prove that to anyone.

Sure, there’s always going to be that little niggle in the back of your mind where you go: “Oh, I wish I was able to do that” or “I wish I had that understanding or that knowledge.” But you have what you have, and you need to be settled with that.

I have great admiration for our mahi toi, for our artists, because our world wouldn’t be a great place without you all. I wonder where your love of art stemmed from, and how your life has steered you towards the role of curating now. Were there some people who encouraged you when you were a young guy?

There are people who are always driven to be artistic or creative in whatever they do. And I think that’s something that was deeply embedded in me from when I popped out of the womb. It was something I responded to all my life.

There have definitely been a huge number of people who have helped me make the most of those skills and the opportunities that I’ve been given. But I guess the decision to go from high school to art school was the most pivotal one, because that’s the moment where you’re choosing a path.

Initially, I did a year of a foundation course at Auckland Institute of Technology, which was mostly about graphic design. Then I took a year off and tried to go on the dole, but didn’t enjoy that very much.

And then I went back and did a degree at Manukau Institute of Technology in Ōtara, and the focus of that degree was on contemporary jewellery practice, which was a little bit left field for me. But I had some friends who were doing it, and it seemed interesting and exciting, and something I didn’t know a lot about. That took me into being a secondary school teacher, where I taught all the art subjects and design and photography and all those sorts of things.

During that time, I did my master’s in sculpture at Elam art school at Auckland University, and that introduced me to a lot of possibilities. A few of us opened a small artist-run space in Auckland. I was in a lot of group studios. It was a great time for forming what I might be in the future. I was still teaching secondary school full-time, and I reached a moment where I decided that wasn’t for me.

I applied for a job at the Objectspace gallery in Auckland, and got it, which was a surprise to everyone, including me. That really dictated the rest of my career as both a curator and now as a gallery director as well.

It was during my time at Objectspace that I curated my first toi Māori show, featuring work from the staff of Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi in Whakatāne. That was my acknowledgment of how my whakapapa could influence my career. And over the years since then, I’ve done lots of projects with Māori artists or group exhibitions or worked on other kaupapa.

Recently, I went on to the board of Wairau Māori Art Gallery, which is a very small independent gallery that sits in the Hundertwasser Centre in Whangārei. One of our mandates is “for Māori, by Māori”, trying to ensure that Māori have a voice and an agency through all parts of the exhibition-making process, and also in the running of the gallery.

The chair is Elizabeth Ellis, and she’s a real force in ensuring that we’re always held to account, we always keep our integrity, and that Wairau really does represent Māori — that it’s not just a name but a kaupapa that is deeply embedded. Elizabeth and many others have been influential in helping me shape my philosophy on how I work and how I interact with other people.

Does curatorial work come at the expense of your own artistic opportunities? What’s going through your mind as you bring a collection of works together?

For me, the role of a curator is to be a storyteller, to assist other people to tell stories. I see my job as being a facilitator of that, not as the overlord of it. The calibre of artists that we have in Aotearoa, particularly our Māori artists, is very high. They’re competent artists and competent individuals in all parts of their practice.

So it’s not my job as a curator to come in and tell them how to suck eggs. It’s my job to help communicate what they want to communicate to an audience. Sometimes, that might be talking through the selection of the work. Sometimes, it might be around how we present the work, or the mode that we use to show the ideas to an audience. Sometimes, it might just be writing the labels and helping with the promotion or the images that we put out into the public sphere. It really depends on the artists.

I was just in South Korea in a place called Gwangju, which has a biennale. Lots of people would have heard this word “biennale,” which just means that every second year there’ll be this big exhibition. New Zealand was presenting a solo exhibition of Shannon Te Ao, who is among our most significant international artists.

My job in that was not to direct Shannon, because he knows his practice very well, and he understands how to present it to an audience. It was really to help facilitate the experience for the visitors, who were mostly international. The main thing with that project and other projects like that is for me to get out of the way when I need to get out of the way, and to be there and support when I need to be in support.

And I feel like that’s a very Māori approach. Know when you’re needed, and be there when you’re needed.

Are we witnessing a significant time in Māori art, do you think, and if so, why?

I think it’s a really important time for Māori, and for Indigenous practice internationally. Covid started the ball rolling, and there were activations around Black Lives Matter as well. There were also big events in the art world, such as directors standing down from their roles because they didn’t represent a diverse enough perspective.

Here in Aotearoa, the current political situation has increased people’s awareness of how Māori need to be present in all those conversations. You can’t keep saying that this is a country about partnership when there isn’t a partnership.

A few years ago, Auckland Art Gallery had Toi Tū Toi Ora, the biggest exhibition that they’d ever hosted. It was all Māori practice and was curated by Nigel Borell. Since then, the quantity of exhibition-making and art practice in the public sphere has greatly increased. I think there’s a real opportunity for us to make the most of the profile we’re given to highlight some of the issues that are happening.

How might we encourage and support more of our emerging Māori artists? What more can we do to let them know that we love what they do and that it’s important to us as a people and our ongoing development?

That’s a hard question to answer. People should do whatever they need to do to show that support. Often people look at public galleries like the one that I run and say: “It’s on you. You need to make changes. You need to have more Māori artists.”

In fact, our programme is full of Māori art and artists, but it can’t be to the exclusion of other parts of our community. When we think about ways that we can support emerging practice, it’s about giving artists opportunities, but not only in an exhibition in a gallery.

I just worked on another project where we did an exhibition in the township of Waipawa, in central Hawke’s Bay. We took over some of the buildings there, and we invited a group of artists to come to Pukehou marae, spend time together, and then put on an exhibition over a weekend.

The conversations we had and the mahi the artists made were amazing. I think it’s about those smaller moments where you get to spend time together and make art, as well as the bigger moments where it’s about an exhibition in a gallery.

We’ve lost a lot of our media outlets, which were traditionally the places where you would read about or find what was happening in the world. A lot of magazines have folded, a lot of reporters have lost their jobs, and news coverage has decreased as a result. In the arts sphere, the same thing is happening. You have to get visibility, and we can all help a bit in that sense.

A jeweller, a sculptor, an artist in your own right, a curator and now a writer as well. Where are you at with your writing?

I find writing very difficult, and I think probably a lot of artists do. Some writers are incredibly articulate and really prolific, and they’re able to communicate their ideas very well. I work at a much slower pace.

One of the things I’m most proud of is the publication I did with Kolokesa Māhina-Tuai and Damian Skinner, called Crafting Aotearoa, a history of craft across Aotearoa in the wider context of Oceania. It took us five years to write it, and it’s not perfect, but I think its contribution has been significant in changing the way we think about definitions of art and craft, and western terminology around toi generally.

What do you derive most satisfaction from when you’re curating an exhibition?

I see the curatorial process as an art practice. I don’t get to make my own work very often. And I don’t like the idea that I’m taking up space that could go to somebody who’s working full time on their toi. That’s something I’m really conscious about.

But as a curator, you have a creative output that is similar to making art — it’s just in a different form.

Particularly in the public gallery sector, most curators will be working on at least three or four projects at once. Right now, I’m working on five or six, all in different stages of development. They’re predominantly projects with Māori kaupapa, or they align closely with some of those philosophies we’ve been working with at Wairau Māori Art Gallery, highlighting Māori and Indigenous practice where we can, but also looking at some of those ideas that are important and topical for our communities at the moment.

For instance, I’m working on an exhibition called Pōhatu Roa: Stories in Stone at The Dowse, featuring work by artists whose main material is stone. There are toi Māori artists in the show, but also artists from various cultural backgrounds. The awesome thing about this project is the level of respect they have for one another’s expertise — and their generosity in sharing that expertise, not only with the audience but with one another.

Do you sense that people who are trying to appreciate toi Māori are more interested in the ways of yesteryear and some of the artistic efforts of our tūpuna? What would you say of artists who are trying to recreate the styles of yesteryear and the emergence of those who are perhaps challenging that, by having more modern concepts and media in their artwork? Can art look back and forward at the same time?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. That’s one of our most famous whakataukī, isn’t it? Walking back into the future.

One of the things that artists do that is so essential to our progress as a society is that they’re constantly pushing at the boundaries, whether it’s reflecting on our past or pushing forward into the future and challenging ideas and preconceptions.

That’s what our artists are doing constantly, and they have done that for millennia. That’s their core role in society.

A lot of the work that I’ve done through the years has focused on highlighting some of those artists who are trying to bring traditional practice into our current time.

I’m thinking of artists like Todd Couper, a carver based in Tauranga. He’s worked for many years alongside Roi Toia and a bunch of other carvers in the in-between space of respecting the traditions of our tūpuna while also trying to develop them further. There are a lot of people in that boat, such as Rangi Kipa and Brett Graham.

Are you hoping to return to your own artistic practice at some stage? What sort of goals do you have going forward?

I’m in a position of privilege with the role that I have and the place that I work in and the people that I know — and, as I said, I don’t want to take space away from other artists who would love the opportunity to show their work.

My own practice has been on hold for the last few years because of my workload. But I think if I was going to start making art again — and I do have that itch like every artist does — it would have to be for a really specific project.

One reason I’m a curator and not an artist full-time is that, as an artist, you’re putting yourself — your whole self — in front of people and asking them to judge it. And I think that’s an incredibly courageous thing to do. I can only do it now and again, and I’m completely in awe of our artists who are out there doing it all the time, because it’s a really confronting thing.

(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

E-Tangata, 2025