Tupaia’s Paintbox - Chief Mourner

This is a pattern outline for a European style waistcoat created by New Zealand artist Jo Torr. She has drawn the pattern on a rectangular sheet of tapa cloth (barkcloth) that has been machine embroidered with images of a figure wearing a 18th century Chief mourner's costume from Tahiti in the Society Islands.

Significance

Torr was inspired by the 18th century Pacific voyages of English explorer Captain James Cook and his encounters with Pacific peoples. Over his three voyages into the region, Cook collected samples of tapa cloths and brought them back to Europe. Using one such sample of Tahitian tapa, Cook’s wife Elizabeth made her husband a waistcoat which she decorated with an embroidered design of ribbons and flowers. Due to Cooks death on his final voyage in 1779, the gift was never presented to him. Elizabeth Cook kept the waistcoat for the rest of her life and it is now held in the archives of the Mitchell Library in Sydney, Australia. A photograph of this historical document inspired the format of Torr’s ‘Tupaia’s Paintbox’, a selection of five embroidered waistcoat panels made from tapa cloth.

This group of works takes its title from the chapter ‘Tupaia’s Paintbox’ in Anne Salmond’s award-winning book The Trial of a Cannibal Dog Captain Cook in the South Seas (2003). When Cook visited Tahiti on his ship Endeavour in 1769, he invited the priest Tupaia and his servant Taiata, to join the voyage. An experienced navigator, Tupaia helped Cook sail though the Society Islands. Tupaia’s language was similar to Mäori, so in New Zealand he helped Cook communicate with the Mäori people. Tupaia and Taiata died from illness when the voyage reached Batavia (now Jakarta, Indonesia).(1)

Tupaia: artist

Scholars have identified Tupaia as the artist of several key works painted during Cook’s first voyage and now in kept in the British Library. Unlike those paintings done by Banks, Spöring and the other European artists on board the Endeavour, they are rare depictions of life in the Pacific from an indigenous perspective.

Torr has embroidered images derived from Tupaia’s early paintings onto tapa cloth. As she explains: ‘The works that make up the series "Tupaia’s Paintbox" celebrate and combine two tangible examples of exchange: that of Elizabeth Cook’s embroidery onto the tapa that Cook brought back from his voyages of discovery and the images made by the Tahitian tohunga [priest/cultural expert] Tupaia with precious watercolour and paper given to him by Cook’.(2)

Acquisition History

This item was first displayed in the exhibition Jo Torr: Tupaia's Paintbox held at the Michael Hirschfeld Gallery, City Gallery Wellington, 9 September-9 October 2005. It was acquired by Te Papa in 2006.

References

(1) Salmond, A. (2003).The trial of the cannibal dog: Captain Cook in the South Seas. London: Allen Lane.

(2) Sourced from original exhibition texts.See also Sarah Farrar (2005) Jo Torr : Tupaia's paintbox. Wellington, N.Z.: City Gallery Wellington.