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.

In this lithograph, the fourth in the series, Maguire shows Herakles in conflict with his Maori neighbours, the next step from the boundary discussions shown in plate III. All the figures are in black-vase style against a coloured landscape. The landscape and much of the group composition is taken from a watercolour by soldier artist Major Gustavus Ferdinand Von Tempsky in the Auckland War Memorial Museum, which has the similar title 'British camp surprised by Maoris who were driven off with heavy losses'. Herakles is at centre on a fantastical rearing white horse, raising his club against a group of four Maori. They are variously armed with axes and rifles, and the far left-hand figure is be wounded. Maguire's mixing of three-dimensional landscape with two-dimensional figures helps to create an atmosphere of ambivalence and rapid change.