By now, I ought to know better than to expect the expected at Mokopōpaki. Yet, reading that the title of the group show HĀTEPE could be translated as ‘algorithm’, my mind went straight to gloomy stereotypes of the internet, to the detection and exacerbation of insidious patterns of human behaviour. Such notions are not absent from the exhibition, but it is altogether brighter in tone, more immediately relating to a second translation: ‘to proceed in an orderly manner’. Orderly processes are everywhere, HĀTEPE seems to say – just as present in tāniko and the use of the starry sky to orient us in space and time as in the tangible-unknowable computer systems that support a world of Instagram and Twitter.

Nourishing networks thread the show. Spiral collective associates Marian Evans and Tiffany Thornley reconnect (as they did last year in This Joyous, Chaotic Place). A scroll of calligraphic visages by Julian Hooper, an elegant assemblage by Krystina Kaza, and witty paper-works by Cale Kaza and Finley Lazurek all stem from one nuclear family. My favourite pieces, a pair of felt and mohair dolls named Te Kōkako and Te Kererū Māui (both 2018), also embody whānau ties. The artist, Te Maari, is the Birmingham-based cousin of Jacob Tere, Keeper of the House at Mokopōpaki. Hovering before the wall, with embroidered moko and leaves (or perhaps feathers) sprouting on their faces, the figures are comforting and strange, within caressing distance and far removed from the problems of the exhaust-riddled street outside. They are, I fancy, like ‘worry dolls’, ready to hear our pains and to help us go on.

Francis McWhannell, The Unmissables: Three Exhibitions to See in July (The Pantograph Punch, 17 July, 2019)