Selwyn Muru, 1937–2024

Selwyn Muru, (Ngāti Kurī, Te Aupōuri, Te Pātū, Ngāti Rēhia, Muri Kahara, Te Whakatōhea) passed away in January 2024. Muru was a gifted and influential artist, as well as a writer, broadcaster, teacher and orator. Here, Contemporary Art Curator Hanahiva Rose reflects on Muru’s work and legacy.

E hika mā kua hinga atu tētahi Rangatira o Ngāti Kuri, Te Aupouri hoki. He pou mātauranga, he tohunga puoro, he pūkenga kua kore.

Herewini Murupaenga, known as Selwyn Muru, was born in Te Hāpua in 1937 to Ani Norman and Henare Murupaenga. Raised in a musical household, his passion and talent for music would stay with him throughout his life.

As a student at Northland College, Muru was taught by the artists Kāterina Mataira and Selwyn Wilson. Years later, Mataira would profile Muru in her book Māori Artists of the South Pacific, describing him as

. . . a person with enormous empathy for people in all walks of life and in all human situations. His own personality is without reserve. Joy and anguish, love and hate, tears and laughter, come readily to him. But everything he does is done with conviction, stemming from his capacity to be absolutely sincere and honest in all his pursuits.¹

After Northland College, Muru continued on to Admore Teachers’ College, where he met Albert Wendt and Sandy Adsett, who would become close friends. Muru worked as a teacher in the early 1960s, as well as in film and broadcasting, while also developing his practice as an artist. In 1963, six of Muru’s paintings were selected for the Autumn Exhibition at the Auckland Society of Arts – prompting a newspaper critic to declare him ‘the best thing that has happened to art in Auckland this year.’² This was quickly followed by a series of exhibitions in Auckland and Wellington.

In 1965, Muru’s painting Kohatu was shown in the Manawatu Prize for Contemporary Art exhibition in Palmerston North and purchased for the collection of the National Art Gallery (now Te Papa). Kohatu is considered the first contemporary Māori artwork to enter the national collection – though Muru was sceptical of the art historical distinction between ‘customary’  and ‘contemporary’ art, insisting ‘Māori art has always been contemporary.’³

‘Kōhatu’ means ‘stone’ in te reo Māori, and Kohatu draws on the rock art of the South Island’s Waitaha people, the oldest art forms in Aotearoa. By abstracting the rock art imagery, Kohatu adapts the techniques of modernism to build upon a uniquely Māori art history. As Curator Modern and Contemporary Māori and Indigenous Art Megan Tamati-Quennell notes, ‘Muru used the rock art to evoke timelessness, but rather than directly reproducing the imagery, he developed his own language based on these ancient works.’⁴  Self-taught as an artist, Muru drew from a wide range of influences. ‘I think every serious painter is mainly self-taught,’ he said. ‘Of course, this means going through several influences. I have aped Cézanne, Van Gogh, and Picasso for long periods – now I hope to be painting like Muru.’⁵

Muru’s deep care and respect for te reo Māori and te ao Māori carries through his work – as in Papa-tu-a-nuku, in Te Papa’s collection, a triptych which includes text from Hone Tuwhare’s poem ‘Papa-Tu-A-Nuku’, reflecting on Māori relationships to whenua and the vitality of Papatūānuku. Tuwhare’s poem refers to the Māori Land March of 1975 – a 1000-kilometre hīkoi, lead by Whina Cooper and Te Rōpū Matakite in protest against the loss of whenua Māori, which began in Muru’s hometown of Te Hāpua.

Papa-Tu-A-Nuku
(Earth Mother)

We are stroking, caressing the spine
of the land.

We are massaging the ricked
back of the land

with our sore but ever-loving feet:
hell, she loves it!

Squirming, the land wriggles
in delight.

We love her.⁶

Endurance and resistance are ongoing themes in Muru’s work. His well known Parihaka series (1975–79), first shown at the Dowse Art Gallery in 1979, recalls the passive resistance of Te Whiti o Rongomai, Tohu Kākahi and the community of Parihaka, and the Crown’s violent invasion of the settlement on 5 November 1881. The exhibition was opened with a pōwhiri, hāngi and readings by writers including Tuwhare and Rowley Habib. Mattresses and blankets were spread around the gallery and guests were invited to stay with the artworks overnight, reflecting Muru’s belief that ‘galleries [should] reek with human odour. They have become too sterile, with paintings like icons, not to be touched. They should be touched.’⁷  Other protest movements, including South African apartheid and the Springbok tour, the Nuclear Free Movement, and the Takaparawhā Bastion Point land occupation, would also become subjects of Muru’s work.

As well as an artist, Muru was a broadcaster, teacher, actor, musician and orator, and in all these roles he was a committed and respected advocate for Māori language and culture. He was a founding member of the Māori Artists and Writers Society Ngā Puna Waihanga in 1973. In 1993, together with Kura Te Waru Rewiri, Muru was involved in the establishment of Te Toi Hou, the Māori art department in Elam School of Fine Arts at Auckland University, where he also taught in the Māori Studies department.

Muru loved language and was a gifted writer and speaker of both te reo Māori and English. He was known for reciting the poems of his dear friend, regular collaborator and whanaunga, Hone Tuwhare. Muru’s installation Waharoa, in Auckland’s Aotea Square, includes an inscription of Tuwhare’s ‘Haiku (1)’ with a te reo Māori translation done by Muru.

Stop your snivelling creek bed,
Come rain, hail and floodwater
Laugh again.

Kaati te whenguwhenguake i raro na e te awa,
Haere mai e te ua, e te whatu, e te waipuke,
Katakatamai ano, ano ra.

1. Kāterina Mataira, Māori Artists of the South Pacific (New Zealand: Nga Puna Waihanga New Zealand Maori Artists & Writers Society, 1984), 68.
2. Rosemary Vincent, ‘Selwyn Muru’s Paintings Win Wide Acclaim,’ Te Ao Hou, March 1964, 25.
3. Selwyn Muru quoted in Moana Nepia, ‘About the Artist: Selwyn Muru,’ The Contemporary Pacific 29(2) (2017), vii.
4. Megan Tamati-Quennell, ‘Selwyn Muru: Kohatu’ in Art at Te Papa, edited by William McAloon (Wellington: Te Papa Press, 2009), 259.
5. Selwyn Muru quoted in Pauline Clayton, ‘Hopes to paint like Muru,’ New Zealand Woman’s Weekly, 2 August 1965, 24.
6. Hone Tuwhare, ‘Papa-Tu-A-Nuku’ in Mihi: Collected Poems (Auckland: Penguin, 1987), 24.
7. Selwyn Muru quoted in ‘Marae Opening for Unusual Exhibition,’ Hutt News, 7 February 1979.