TITLE: The Roundup (from the Riders of the Red Manuka Suite)
MATERIAL: Colour woodblock print on cotton rag paper, 3rd State, 2011.
SIZE: Image Size 590 x 420mm,
Total Paper Size - 760 x 570mm

Faith McManus
Ngāpuhi and Ngai Takoto

Riders of the Red Manuka was a series of prints that I made when I was researching the film that was thought to be made in the Far North in 1923. It started when my Mum said 'Papa was one of the Cowboys of the Red Manuka'. This Maori Kaupoi was part of the roundup at Mt Camel which was photographed by the Northwood brothers.

Faith is of Maori, Irish, English and Croatian descent. She was raised by her maternal grandparents in Muriwhenua (the far north of Aotearoa-New Zealand). Faith has a Dip FA (Hons), Otago Polytechnic where she majored in printmaking with Marilynn Webb ONZM. She worked as a printmaking lecturer in Whanganui at the Quay School of Arts, gained her MFA from RMIT Melbourne and returned home to take up a position as a lecturer at NorthTec, Whangārei. She has exhibited in New Zealand, USA, Norway and Australia at dealer and public galleries, and has work in public and private collections throughout New Zealand and the world. As an artist Faith draws upon her Maori and European heritage and her work is based on the interconnectedness of ancestry, narrative and culture. She describes her work as a journey of self discovery.
“Much of my work investigates ideas about whakapapa, cultural memory and personal narrative. I describe my process as 'tutelage'. I play with the conventions of woodcut, sign and pattern to construct new interrelationships.”