Description:

We were approached by the Auckland War Memorial Museum, as they embarked on huge redevelopment of the south atrium - to collaborate on a very special permanent installation. The centrepiece of the South Atrium space is Talitali ‘Au Moana". A tanoa is the point around which people gather to converse during a talanoa, and its heroic tanoa encourages that same kind of engagement.

As visitors enter the space they are invited to observe and interact "Under the Tanoa", an experience created with the three iwi represented in the Museum's Taumata-ā-Iwi, that tells their stories of arrival and place.

Working with Kaumatua from Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei, Ngāti Paoa and Waikato Tainui, the brief was to design 3 x 6 min projection mapped animations, utilising the back wooden ‘fins’ and floor directly under the tanoa, and above the mauri stone buried beneath its foundations. The stories play every hour, every day as a key feature of the space, a welcome, a history and acknowledgement of the people of the land.