Takapuna

“Takapuna” is the title of this work by Cornelia König, which she created after traveling to New Zealand. Takapuna is also the name of an Auckland district where writer Janet Frame lived for a time. The text passages visible behind the panes are quotes from Frame’s book “An Angel at My Table”. The black patterns are inspired by Māori drawings. “And so on Friday I set out from Northcote towards Mr Sargeson´s place in Takapuna, walking along the largely unformed road with paddocks of scrub and toetoe on either side, past swamps of mangroves – mangroves! – and stands of native bush. It was late spring of 1954, and I´d had my thirtieth birthday, an occasion for a photograph and, in poetic tradition, for a poem.”

Janet Frame, „An angel at my table“, the complete autobiography

„And so on Friday I set out from Nothcote towards Mr Sargeson’s place in Takapuna, walking along the largely unformed road with paddocks of scrub and toetoe on either side, past swamps and mangroves – mangroves! – and stands of native bush. It was late spring of 1954, and I‘d had my thirtieth birthday, an occasion for a photograph and, in poetic tradition, for a poem.“

„That afternoon, instead of resting and reading in the hut, following the example of Mr Sargeson’s routine, I wandered the streets of Takapuna. I sat on the beach, looking out to Rangitoto, the island everyone in Auckland claimed as theirs, speaking of its perfect shape viewed from all directions as if they had helped to design and form it. ‚See, there’s Rangitoto,‘ they said. I thought, So this is the island in Charles Brasch’s poem,

Harshness of gorse darkens the yellow cliff-edge,

And scarlet-flowered trees lean out to drop

Their shadows on the bay below …