Extended inscriptions
E / KORE / E / NGARO / HE / TAKERE / WAKA / NUI
we will never be lost, / we are the hull of a / great canoe.

Colin McCahon’s painting We are the Hull of a Great Canoe is the earliest in the exhibition. Painted in 1969, the text ‘E KORE E NGARO HE TAKERE WAKA NUI / we will never be lost; we are the hull of a great canoe’ is taken from the book The Tail of the Fish: Māori Memories of the Far North by Matire Kereama, which was published the year prior and was given to McCahon by his daughter Catherine. As a Pākehā, McCahon’s use of te reo Māori continues to be a topic of debate to this day. McCahon showed a revitalized interest in te ao Māori in 1969, which many have attributed in part to the birth of his mokopuna, his daughter Victoria and husband Ken Carr’s first-born child. This work talks to the ancestral waka which tie Māori both to other Māori descendants, and to the wider Te Moana nui-a-Kiwa.