Ming Ranginui, cake of origin

Artist: Ming Ranginui
Title: cake of origin
Year: 2025
Material: Muka and glass beads
Size: 450mm high x 100mm wide x 100mm deep

cake of origin is a pink square lamington poi, crafted with dyed pink muka and glass beads. 

Through cake of origin Ming references an enduring competition, regarding possession between the neighbouring Five Eye colonies. Settlers in Australia drive this trivial grab with its eternal propensity to over compensate and claiming things as their own. Research into desert authenticity, also considered with the Pavlova, are ridiculed as puerile debates that assist settlers to gloss over the real questions of origin. 

Questions that they should be interrogating around their own lives and how they really came to live and prosper on these colonised lands. 

“The most widely-held theory is that lamingtons were invented by in Lord & Lady Lamingtons kitchen. But which kitchen, and by whose hands? (state library of QLD)Cast off as an April fools joke in Australia, research by Uni of Auckland suggests that the lamington might in fact be from NZ. An analysis of watercolours by NZ artist JR Smythe found that a “lamington cake” is pictured in one portrait from 1888 called ‘Summer Pantry’, so… it’s a contentious issue. (Taste.com.au lol)

A poi ‘is the name given to a Māori performance artform, and a taonga made from a small ball attached to a cord or string. Poi were once an integrated part of everyday life with their use spanning the realms of music, health, combat, spirituality, storytelling, and entertainment. Tepapa.govt.nz 

Muka, the fibre extracted from harakeke (New Zealand flax). It is also a powerful symbol of connection. Māori see muka as more than a mere material. This inner fibre symbolises the unseen and connects the physical and spiritual realms – te ira tangata (the realm of people) with te ira atua (the realm of the gods). The language of weaving reflects this belief. ‘Aho’ refers to connections. ’Whenu’ may represent the womb or whenua (land). An older name for ‘whenu’ was ‘Io’ – the supreme being. Muka  represents historical threads of connection. http://Tepapa.govt.nz

In a dramatic turn of events in her week on Gadigal land, Sydney Ming ended up with an addiction and left the country with a Billum full of lamingtons ;)