Richard Lewer is a Kirikiriroa Hamilton born, Melbourne-based, artist. His research and artwork frequently investigates difficult subjects or probes extreme behaviour. But mostly, he is a visual storyteller; painting is how he makes sense of the world. He is a contemporary social realist, with an interest in interrogating what is complex and troubling about our society; as objectively as possible – without a moralising tone.

For his exhibition at the New Zealand Portrait Gallery Te Pūkenga Whakaata for the Aotearoa Festival of the Arts in Wellington, Lewer has created a new body of work resulting from his own personal journey learning about the Waikato Wars.

Lewer began researching and making this body of work because he, like many New Zealanders wasn’t taught about the New Zealand Wars when he went through school in Hamilton in the 1980’s. He feels it’s important for all New Zealanders to acknowledge and digest what happened, to help better understand our complex and disputed colonial history. Lewer thinks this will be the most important artwork series he will ever create, as he develops an understanding of the history of the place he comes from and his place within and resulting from that history.

This exhibition is a part of the Aotearoa Festival of the Arts.

The views expressed in this exhibition are the personal views of the artist and not necessarily the views of the gallery and its board and sponsors.

Further information on the Waikato Wars

• Legacy of war: settling the Waikato-Tainui claim - entry from Ministry of Culture and Heritage site NZHistory.govt.nz

• A Journey through the Waikato War  - educational resourced published by Heritage New Zealand

• Stories of Tanui - RNZ television documentary

• Maori Wars – entry from An encyclopaedia of New Zealand (1966), which indicates how the wars were thought about half a century ago 

• New Zealand Wars – a site run by Danny Keenan, formerly Associate Professor of Māori Studies, Victoria University of Wellington

• Digitised texts relating to the New Zealand Wars – on the NZ Electronic Text Centre website (includes the James Cowan volumes mentioned below)

• The Waikato War, 1863-4 - published by John Featon 16 years after the end of the Waikato War

• Dictionary of New Zealand Biography – contains biographical information on most of the key people involved in the New Zealand Wars

• Invasion of the Waikato interactive map - from Te Ara, the online Encyclopedia of New Zealand

• The Waikato War - Heritage New Zealand in conjunction with HamiltonWaikato.com have created a phone app and downloadable resources relating to the key battle sites

• The New Zealand Wars – documentary narrated by James Belich (NZ On Screen)

• The New Zealand Wars, The New Zealand Wars: A History of the Maori Campaigns and the Pioneering Period: Volume 1 - published by James Cowan 1955

• The Governor - episode five -  from six-part TV epic that examined the life of Governor George Grey. This episode depicts key battles of the 1863-64 Waikato War.