Hau Weherua / Trade Winds: Madison Kelly

Free

Hau Weherua / Trade Winds explores sound and mark-making as ways of listening to whakapapa—layered relationships connecting ancestors, people, and place. This interactive installation by Madison Kelly draws on the journeys of Kāti Māmoe from their ancestral lands in Heretaunga, travelling south along the eastern coast of Te Wai Pounamu The South Island.

The work invites visitors to play two groups of brass cymbals—echoing both Islands journeyed by the iwi—using suspended mallets. The artist has hand-hammered figures on the cymbals using chasing and repoussé, a traditional metalworking technique. They acknowledge key nonhuman ancestors who shaped Kāti Māmoe journeys and navigation, with each figure given a unique voice. These include Tū Matamata, the taniwha companion of Kāti Māmoe chief Te Rakitauneke, whose movements influenced the waterways of their eventual settlement in Otago. Also represented are wind systems and ocean currents that support inter-island travel, alongside tohorā (southern right whales) who guided ocean journeys, and tōtara trees, a traditional material for making waka.

Accompanying drawings map winds and coastlines as imagined scores for a performance with cymbals and pūtōrino (a Māori wind instrument), reflecting Kelly’s practice of taonga pūoro—traditional Māori instruments used to communicate with ancestors and the environment. Each element of the installation calls to one another, echoing the movements of winds, nonhuman beings, and tāngata whenua who have journeyed and traded along the eastern coastlines for centuries.

Madison Kelly (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Pākehā, b. 1994) is an Ōtepoti Dunedin-based artist, musician, and kaiārahi / lead guide at Te Korowai o Mihiwaka, Orokonui Ecosanctuary. Hau Weherua / Trade Winds is the third iteration of an ongoing series of interactive percussive installations connecting Te Waipounamu and Te Ika-a-Māui, following Whāia te Taniwha (2025) at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū and Whai Wāhi (2025) at The Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi in Wellington.

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