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.

This eleventh lithograph, perhaps the most striking in the series, brings Herakles's labours into the twentieth century and the events of the First World War. Here he lines up to fight at Gallipoli. Herakles is in black-vase style, his lion skin still showing the broken teeth from plate 6. The Maori chief Natai (recorded by de Sainson), however, has shed the persona of Herakles, and here appears in British army uniform, with his 'moko' facial tattoos restored. He stands shoulder to shoulder with Herakles and the British soldier, who's pensive face is that of the New Zealand wrestling champion Robert James Scott, taken from James McAllister's photograph in the Alexander Turnbull library. The figures stand shoulder to shoulder, urged on by Herakles, a reminder of all the lives lost in this great war.