Skin Deep

Ta moko retrospectively finds its way into an icon of colonialism: the museum. The Skin Deep exhibition at Britain’s National Maritime Museum, traces the development and diversity of tattoo over the last two hundred years. Featuring the work of Te Rangitu Netana (personal engraver to Robbie Williams), and attracting notice: from the knowing and smooth: “a retrospective of fleshy couture” (New Statesman), to post-colonial sensitivity in The Times: “a short film made in New Zealand reveals how these native cultures are now reclaiming the designs that were so long repressed: fairs and festivals are devoted to the art, and there’s even a return to the use of the traditional hammer and chisel.”