hoki mai rā w Aunty Sandy Kerr at RM Gallery (Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland) 2026

Hoki Mai Rā (Return to Me) emerges from a period of quiet departure. Within six months, I lost both my Māori Koro and my Australian Pa, each passing at 88. Two grandfathers, two lineages, returning to the same horizon. Their absence arrived in loops, echoes, and repetitions of memory. This exhibition follows that rhythm.

The title comes from a line of waiata that circled my mind after their passing, words I remember my Koro singing throughout his life: hoki mai rā. Return to me. The phrase repeated like breath or tide, calling presence through absence. Return here is not nostalgic, but cyclical, where memories and relationships continually re-enter and reshape the present.

At its centre, Blue is the colour of the sky and thats where heaven is unfolds as a 25-minute stream of consciousness composed of Handycam footage recorded between 2018 and 2026. Moving across geographies and temporalities, the work resists fixed narrative, instead tracing patterns that emerge through repetition. Gestures recur, landscapes reappear, laughter echoes across years. Drawing from te ao Māori understandings of time, the work carries whakapapa forward, where the past is held alongside us, guided by whenua and the whetū above.

Central to the work is time spent in Aotearoa with whānau, particularly the return to our marae for Koro’s Kawe Mate. Guided by my Aunty Sandy Kerr, a ceramist, we returned to our whānau whenua to source materials, harvesting papa from the riverbanks where he was born and gathering pumice from the edges of Lake Taupō for glaze. Together, we created ceramic pūtangitangi, Māori flutes formed from the whenua of our tīpuna, carrying breath across generations. The process of sourcing, making, and playing these instruments is woven throughout the video, their sound connecting body to land, past to present.

Aunty Sandy’s contribution extends into a series of photo lithographs drawn from images taken on the marae and surrounding whenua. The works draw from the layered logic of whakapapa: not only genealogy, but an accumulation of relations where whenua, image, memory, and mauri remain interconnected. The papa harvested from our whenua, blue in its raw state and transformed red through firing, carries this sense of becoming within the material itself. Positioned opposite the projected video, the lithographs enter into dialogue with the moving image through contrast and repetition: soft and hard, flowing and settled, spiral and layer.

Running throughout the exhibition is the presence of queer and trans whānau, lovers, and chosen kin. Across continents and contexts, fragments gather: the Pyramids of Giza, techno festivals in Berlin, pride marches, trans rights protests, family feasts, and shared rituals. These moments are shaped through love, resistance, grief, and care, gesturing toward broader forms of return: whenua returning to whenua, whānau returning to whānau, bodies returning to one another.

Hoki Mai Rā speaks to growth through return. Grief moves in spirals, curling inward and outward again. Repetition becomes remembrance. Layers become inheritance. Through images, materials, and sound, the exhibition proposes that what binds us is not sameness, but our capacity to remain in relation through collective care, connection, and shared return.



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Hoki Mai Rā (Return to Me) emerges from a period of quiet departure. Within six months, I lost both my Māori Koro and Australian Pa, each passing at 88. Two grandfathers, two lineages, returning to the same horizon. Their absence arrived in loops, echoes and repetitions of memory. This exhibition follows that rhythm.

The title comes from a line of waiata I remember my Koro singing throughout his life: hoki mai rā. Return to me. The phrase became a quiet refrain, calling presence through absence. Here, return is not nostalgic but cyclical, where memories and relationships continually re-enter and reshape the present.

At its centre, Blue is the colour of the sky and thats where heaven is is a 25-minute stream of consciousness composed of Handycam footage recorded between 2018 and 2026. Across geographies and temporalities, the work traces patterns through repetition: gestures recur, landscapes reappear, laughter echoes across years. Drawing from te ao Māori understandings of time, the work carries whakapapa forward, holding past and present alongside one another, guided by whenua and the whetū above.

Central to the work is time spent in Aotearoa with whānau, particularly returning to our marae for Koro’s Kawe Mate. Guided by my Aunty Sandy Kerr, we returned to our whānau whenua to harvest papa from the riverbanks where he was born and gather pumice from Lake Taupō for glaze. Together, we created pūtangitangi, Māori flutes formed from the whenua of our tīpuna, carrying breath across generations. Their making and sound are woven through the video, connecting body to land, past to present.

Aunty Sandy’s photo lithographs, made from images taken on the marae and surrounding whenua, extend this dialogue. They draw on whakapapa as an accumulation of relations between whenua, image, memory and mauri. The papa, blue raw and transformed red through firing, carries this becoming within the material itself.

Running throughout are queer and trans whānau, lovers and chosen kin. Across continents, fragments gather: Giza, Berlin, pride marches, protests, family feasts and shared rituals. Together they gesture toward return: whenua to whenua, whānau to whānau, bodies to one another.

Hoki Mai Rā speaks to growth through return. Grief moves in spirals. Repetition becomes remembrance. Layers become inheritance. What binds us is not sameness, but our capacity to remain in relation through care, connection and shared return.

Documentation images by RM Gallery
© J Davies