Honouring tūpuna through toi: national portrait exhibition coming to Puke Ariki

A major national touring exhibition celebrating the work of young Māori artists, and their enduring connections to tūpuna (ancestors) through portraiture, opens at NPDC’s Puke Ariki Museum in July.

The Kiingi Tuheitia Portraiture Award exhibition presents 40 artworks by emerging Māori artists from across Aotearoa, selected from the 2025 competition organised by Te Pūkenga Whakaata New Zealand Portrait Gallery. The biennial award was devised by the late Kiingi Tuheitia Pootatau Te Wherowhero VII to inspire a new generation of emerging Māori artists to create portraits of their tūpuna.

Spanning photography, painting, weaving, sculpture, video, and mixed media, the exhibition artworks showcase the diverse ways artists use toi (creative practice) to give form to whakapapa, identity, and intergenerational relationships.

Puke Ariki Museum Director Frith Williams says hosting the exhibition allows Puke Ariki to connect a nationally significant touring show with the ringatoi (artists), tūpuna, and stories of Taranaki.

“It was important for us that the exhibition included a strong local component,” she says. “So, our curator Natasha McKinney commissioned four new portraits by Taranaki artists Nia Tipene, Tania Niwa, Meke Mauriri, and Luanna Sheridan to be shown alongside the touring works, honouring tūpuna of this region. These are presented with historic local photographic portraits from our collections, and a series of Ngāti Te Whiti oral histories.”

Ngāti Te Whiti artist, researcher, and film producer Cilla Harnett, who curated the oral histories, says they bring the voices of mana whenua into the exhibition.

“Through oral histories, we keep our tūpuna alive, constantly reasserting ourselves and our everlasting connection to the whenua from where we came. This is reflected in the whakatauākī written by Daniel Keenan and Ricky Gage: ‘Ko ngā honohonotanga a iwi, a hapū, a whānau, e whakapūmautia ana, te hononga o ngā mātua tūpuna me o rātou uri whakatipu.’ It speaks to our relationships and intergenerational connections - past, present, and future.”

The gallery space has also been shaped by senior Taranaki artist WharehokaSmith, who worked alongside emerging local artists Jodie Tipa and Dwayne Duthie during the recent TUKU: Open Studio to create eight manaia (spiritual guardians). These elements now form an integral part of the exhibition environment, acknowledging the manaakitanga (hospitality) of tangata whenua as hosts.

The Kiingi Tuheitia Portraiture Award exhibition opens at Puke Ariki on 25 July and runs until 1 November 2026.

At a glance

• Puke Ariki, meaning Hill of Chiefs, stands on a former prominent pā site in central New Plymouth.
• It opened in 2003 as a combined library and museum – an innovative storehouse for Taranaki’s taonga and stories.
• The museum presents both long-term and regularly changing exhibitions across six gallery spaces.
• The central and community libraries offer many events designed to foster a love of reading, learning, and connection.
• Puke Ariki also houses a research centre, restaurant, and café, and the district’s i-SITE visitor information and ticketing hub.
  
  

Caption: Taranaki artist Luanna Sheridan with her commissioned work Hine‑Pū te Hue, created for the Kiingi Tuheitia Portraiture Award exhibition. The work draws on Māori atua narratives, using gourd forms to explore balance, transformation and intergenerational creation.