Cook the Captain

My Artwork is a symbol of remembrance to our Captains of Navigation, Kupe the great navigator who arrived here in 925AD and Paoa of the Horouta Waka many years before the arrival of James Cook and the Endeavour. The title of my artwork “Cook the Captain” refers to the, ‘cooking of the Captain’ rather than he, ‘being the Captain’. He is in no way a Captain that I look up to as being a hero or source of encouragement. The black steeple in the middle of the artwork is what the colonisers continue to do by erecting monolithic monuments to the memory of James Cook. It is shaped in the form of a gun barrel to represent the gun used to shoot Te Rakau and Te Maro. Such phallic symbolism presented by the coloniser serves only to represent their obvious desire to appear to be ‘larger than life’ however stand as symbols of murder, arrogance and theft.