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Overview
A carved Māori figure, cut off half way through its face by the frame, stands centre right. At the far right are drapes, on the far left is a section of plank with kowhaiwhai painted on it and to the right of this some wooden tree trunks sharpened like palisade uprights. A sign reading "silence" is placed at the top left and a loudspeaker in a box sits on the floor directly below this.
This extract originally appeared in New Zealand Photography Collected: 175 Years of Photography in Aotearoa (Te Papa Press, 2025) on page 348.
At first glance this photograph suggests a neglected corner of an old museum, with haphazardly presented Māori carvings and an incongruous, carelessly placed loudspeaker and ‘silence’ sign. But first glances can be deceptive. This is in fact a Savage Club — an organisation founded in London in 1857, dedicated to entertainment, fellowship and charitable works. As the movement spread around the world, local branches light-heartedly adopted features of each country’s indigenous culture, staging ersatz performances and decorating clubrooms with ethnic ‘artefacts’. Neither the carved figure nor the painted kōwhaiwhai pattern here are authentic. If this scene looks like a loose interpretation of a museum display, then it’s worth remembering that a ‘real’ museum display can only ever be a constructed representation of Māori culture. The artifice of the Savage Club points to the artifice of its referent, the museum. As if to emphasise the fact that Māori culture has no voice here, the head of the figure is cut off and commanded to stay silent while the loud-speaker does the talking. Or are we the ones being told to keep quiet about this state of affairs?