New Zealand-born artist, Marian Maguire, creates lithographic series that combine the colonial history of New Zealand with imagery from Greek vase painting. She brings together the rich print and photographic iconography of Europe’s encounter with New Zealand with the classical imagery of Ancient Greece to comment on the timeless and yet culturally nuanced nature of empire and conflict.

The addition of black vase iconography serves to emphasise the loaded history that Europeans brought with them to the Pacific to meet an equally ancient Maori culture. The weaving of mythic classical heroes like Odysseus and Heracles into narratives of European exploration highlights the changing nature of received histories. Just as classical myths changed through oral traditions, perceptions of the Pacific changed in Europe as different accounts and images were brought back.

In her series The Labours of Herakles, Maguire sets the classical tale of Herakles (Hercules) in New Zealand, combining his labours with colonial encounters and struggles between Maori and the British. Introduced and concluded by decorated classical urns, the twelve prints show Herakles as both coloniser and colonised, struggling to make sense of his life and labours. In every print Maguire quotes directly from prints and photographs produced as a result of British exploration and settlement in the Pacific. Many of these are in the NMM collections.

This third lithograph in the series shows Maguire's powerful composition of facing figures in profile, which echoes a print in 'The Odyssey of Captain Cook', 'Ko wai koe? (Who are you?)' (ZBA7682). Here Herakles appears to the right, staring out of his lion skin. He faces a Maori warrior shown in black-vase style. Their status as opposing cultures is complicated, however. While shown in the Greek style familiar to Herakles, the Maori warrior is taken from Sydney Parkinson's drawing on Cook's first voyage. Equally, Herakles takes the features of the Maori warrior Natai drawn by Louis Auguste de Sainson on the comte de Lapérouse's voyage to the Pacific and published in 'Voyage de la Corvette Astrolabe éxécuté pendant les années 1826-1829'. His 'moko' facial tattoos have been removed however. In this new version of 'Ko wai koe?' Maguire implies closer collaboration between Maori and British with an overlapping, but perhaps loss, of cultures on both sides.