Communique 2012: Lyonel Grant - Te Noho Kotahitanga tradition and innovation 
(Lectures)
27 March 2012
12 pm - 1 pm
Venue: Conference Centre Lecture Theatre, Building 423, 22 Symonds Street
Host: School of Architecture and Planning
Cost: Free
Contact info: Natalie Guy
Contact email: n.guy@auckland.ac.nz
Website: Communique 2012
Sponsor: New Zealand Wood
Lyonel Grant is one of Aotearoa’s preeminent sculptors and the designer and carver of extraordinary meeting houses such as Ngakau Mahaki at Unitec’s Owairaka campus. This whare whakairo is startlingly innovative yet is balanced by a committed return to the structural integrity of the past in which the carved poupou and heke are not mere decoration of a pre-constructed European framework; they are an integral part of the structure.
Lyonel’s complex practice spans between the traditions of whakairo rakau, arising from his training at the NZ Māori Arts and Crafts Institute in Rotorua, and later contemporary modes of art production. It is at the complex intersections of these strands that his work both challenges and extends the categories and traditions of art practice in Aotearoa.
His other notable meeting houses are Te Matapihi o te Rangi in Tokoroa and Ihenga at the Tangatarua Marae on the Waiariki Institute of Technology campus in Rotorua. He has also created other works around the country and in international forums. With Damian Skinner he collaborated on the book Ihenga: Te Haerenga Hou, an important introduction to the evolution of Māori carving in the 20th Century.
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