A Vocabulary

Bruce Connew

National Library
Te Puna Foundation Gallery, Ground floor
Corner Molesworth & Aitken St, Wellington

16 August - 15 November 2025

Detail from Memorial (1891) to British and kāwanatanga forces, 58th and 96th Regments, Royal Marines and seamen from HMS North Star and HMS Hazard, British Forces, under Lt Col William Hulme, with kawanatanga forces, under Tāmati Wāka Nene, te rangatira o Ngāti Hao, Ngāpuhi, killed in battle against Hōne Heke Pōkai, te rangatira o Ngāti Rāhiri, Ngāi Tāwake, Ngāpuhi, with Te Ruki Kawiti, te ranagatira o Ngāti Hine a Honeāmaru, Ngāpuhi, Te Kahika pā, Puketutu, 8 May 1845. Saint Catherine’s Church, Ōkaihau. Photo Bruce Connew.

Bruce Connew’s exhibition A Vocabulary presents photographs of memorials and gravestones from Aotearoa’s colonial wars, reflecting on how these histories are often misremembered — or not remembered at all.

A Vocabulary is the result of several years of roaming among the memorials and gravestones of Aotearoa’s colonial wars, seeking out the texts on these testaments to folly – A vocabulary of colonisation.

These remnants are scattered across mostly Te Ika-a-Māui North Island, residual memory, misremembered, not remembered. And there are those who know the Imperial story only too well.

I step mindfully onto the farmland to photograph a panorama of the battle site from both Māori and Pākehā points of view.

After several footsteps, and with some bafflement, I stop dead in my tracks at a strange sensation deep inside my belly, which today I’m still unable clearly to throw light on.

History was here, I grasp that, but this was out of that range. Does earth hold memory, and deliver that memory when the gravity is ripe?

– Bruce Connew

A Vocabulary was first exhibited at Te Uru Waitākere Contemporary Gallery in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland in 2020.