While Sir Apirana Ngata proposed that the way forward is to hold the tools of Pākehā in our hands and the knowledge of our ancestors in our hearts, I believe today’s equivalent would be an iPhone in one hand and our tikanga in the other. The internet, and all things digital, are very much ingrained in our daily experience of the world and of each other – our politics, identity, and voice.

Toko koi i te pō speaks to an emergence from darkness, and the intensity of potential and creativity in darkness and the void. As a framework for these artworks in Gallery Three, Toko koi i te pō seeks to explore how new media may be grasped to express autonomy of self, identity and knowledge from the past, in the present, for the future. Toko koi i te pō poses an open question to its audience: when indigenous people have been defined in the past as the ‘vanishing race’, how may we utilise new media, technology and the internet to see ourselves and our knowledges as thriving, successful and very much alive in the future?