Meeting-house Paintings

Te Ao Hou, June 1962, Page 33

Meeting-house Paintings These paintings are in the meeting-house Hinetapora, which was opened in 1896 and which stands at Mangahanea, near Ruatoria. Paintings such as these (there used to be many in Maori houses, though most have disappeared now) are valuable as historical documents, as showing how people thought and felt about things in those days. And they are valuable because their liveliness and freshness of approach make them attractive to look at. They are less important, of course, than early Maori art; but they cannot simply be dismissed as ‘decadent’. In Europe until recently, there was a similar art which belonged to villagers—‘folk art’, it is called. Maori art like this is also folk art, and is equally worth preserving.

Mrs Ivy Papakura, the lady on the right, comes from New Plymouth but lives in Palmerston North now. Left to right: Mrs Milly Clark (‘Aunty Millie’), who lives in Wellington; Mrs Witerina Harris, who lives at Island Bay; Mrs M. Love, President of the Wellington District Council of the W.W.L.