Simon Kaan & Wi Taepa - Hiringa Nuku: Online Catalogue

Sanderson are pleased to announce a new exhibition by Simon Kaan (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Mamoe, Waitaha) and Wi Taepa (Ngāti Pikiao, Te Arawa) ONZM - Hiringa Nuku.

What We Hold of Each Other

By Dina Jezdić

The life of a visual artist is a sustained journey, measured by endurance, curiosity, and the deepening of insight over time. Unlike athletes, many artists grow stronger with age, their work maturing as the years pass. What nurtures them is the company they keep: the circle of other artists and creative minds, who talk and listen, who become a kind of chosen kinship. In such circles, camaraderie becomes a fuel. One artist's success may open doors for the others, but more importantly, the dialogue itself - the shared doubts, the laughter, the encouragement, becomes a way of carrying each other forward. These relationships hold a latent charge. This is the spark and risk of collaboration: knowledge passed from one hand to another, its potential not in the instruction but in what is ignited. In other words, a person can explain a box of matches to you, but it is up to you to start a fire. That combustion is the essence of tuakana-teina, a living framework of mentorship and reciprocal learning, where guidance and curiosity meet, each shaping the other, and together igniting something larger than themselves.

At the heart of Hiringa Nuku, a collaborative exhibition referencing “the energy of the earth”, Simon Kaan and Wi Taepa embody the sustaining power of a tuakana-teina relationship, one that stretches across many years and unfolds like a lifetime of conversations. In Te Ao Māori, the tuakana guides, nurtures, and shares knowledge, while the teina brings curiosity, energy, and fresh perspectives. In Kaan and Taepa's collaboration, this dynamic is neither hierarchical nor fixed; it is a fluid, evolving conversation. Over the years, their practices have intertwined, diverged, and reconvened, each encounter adding layers of insight and form. Hiringa Nuku marks the latest chapter in this ongoing dialogue, reflecting how long-term collaboration fosters creativity, mentorship, and generational continuity.

The exhibition also explores an elemental connection, with vessels recurring throughout as metaphors for relationality. Kaan's paintings emerge from the rhythms of water and sky, his delicate elongated waka populate the surface of the works as markers of presence; reflecting both the artist's identity and an invitation for the viewer to enter. Taepa's clay vessels, rooted in whenua, provide an earthy counterpoint: fragile and resilient. They carry ancestral memory and the weight of the land. Together, painting and clay, create a meeting place where water meets the earth and the sky hovers above; suggesting a conversation between realms - both physical and spiritual. Water shapes the artworks, whenua anchors them, and the sky completes the cycle.

Ultimately, Hiringa Nuku is an exploration of relational thinking. Through decades of dialogue, through the give-and-take of tuakana-teina, and through the interplay of water and land, Kaan and Taepa show that art is a conversation across time and generations. The exhibition reminds us that creativity is communal, enduring, and alive-flowing like water, grounded like clay, and as expansive as the sky. It suggests that we come to know ourselves not in isolation, but in relation to others, their stories, their struggles, the particulars of their lives, and that this shared knowing becomes, in the end, the story of how we live and who we are.