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 tenth lithograph in the series, Maguire continues the visual strategy of placing two-dimensional black vase figures within a three-dimensional landscape. Herakles sits at centre with his head in his hands. His lion skin, removed, is draped over his ionic columnar seat, leaving him naked and vulnerable. Athena stands angrily over him, her gaze averted, showing her displeasure at his slow progress in building 'Arcadia'. His struggles are demonstrated in the background, where classical ruins fall against a lithograph of a New Zealand landscape with a Maori 'pa' (fortified settlement) visible in the distance. Herakles's labours have resulted in the destruction of his own civilisation, while the Maori settlement appears intact.