Ockham Lecture: The complex roles of adornment in te ao Māori with Ngarino

Join us at Objectspace for an Ockham Lecture with Ngarino Ellis – associate professor in Art History at Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland. Ellis introduces her lecture:

How can the act of wearing of a hei tiki bring together political, economic and social landscapes? How have artists pivoted their practice to counter shifting materialities? And how have adornments acted as peacemakers, diplomats and emissaries?

This talk presents research-in-progress which focuses on the multiple roles that adornment has played in te ao Māori, and how their making and remaking weaves together people and place, past, present and future.

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Ngarino Ellis (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou) is a Professor of Art History at Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland, whose primary field of research is Māori art history.

Her work focuses on identifying, promoting and recuperating mātauranga around art forms, practices, artists and theories, spanning Māori art and culture from Te Kore to the present day, across both marae and gallery contexts. Her teaching spans Māori and Indigenous art, museum studies, art crime and gender.

Ellis is particularly interested in pre-1900 art, with a focus on tribal carving, moko signatures, and body adornment as well as the broader issues of tradition, identity, materiality and the significance of Māori art history in general.

She is the author of A Whakapapa of Tradition: 100 Years of Ngāti Porou Carving, 1830–1930 (2016), which received multiple awards, and co-author of Toi Te Mana: An Indigenous History of Māori Art (2024), winner of the 2025 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards Bookhub Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction.

Ellis has also co-edited important volumes on Māori art and collaborated on curatorial projects in Aotearoa and internationally including Whakawhanaungatanga: Connecting People and Taonga (Linden Museum, Stuttgart, 2022 – 24) and Pūrangiaho: Seeing Clearly (Auckland Art Gallery, 2001).

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The Ockham Lecture series is an annual programme of lectures and panel discussions across different themes that critically engage with craft, design and architecture. This programme is supported by Objectspace's Lead Partner Ockham Residential.

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