As part of a weekly showcase of future leaders and inspirational young New Zealanders from the Hyundai Pinnacle Programme, Ella Neal's dream is to bring art, Te Tiriti o Waitangi and communities together
Ella Neal planned on becoming an engineer, but once she finished high school, she realised her passion for art could take her in a completely different direction. The Stage 3 Pinnacle Programme student is completing her third year at the University of Auckland, working towards a conjoint Bachelor of Fine Arts and Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Māori studies and art history.
“It’s actually quite a funny story,” the 21-year-old from Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland says of her change of tack. “All through school, I was really good at physics and maths, so from Year 9 engineering was the path I was going to go down. I was pretty set on going to Canterbury to study civil engineering, but then in my gap year I had this realisation that I really love art. I did art as my fun subject at school, then I picked up art history in Year 13.”
Neal grew up in the Anglican Church. “I felt the sense of God saying, ‘You can do something with your art, go on and use it.’ So, I had this complete switch,” she says. “It felt really scary. When you’re studying engineering, you’re going to be an engineer. When you study fine arts, it’s a little bit more open. It felt like a risky step to pursue art, which is my passion. I don’t know where it’s going to go or anything, but I am so grateful that I did. It’s been the best decision.”
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During her gap year in 2019, Neal took part in an Anglican-run social justice initiative called Better World. “We spent some time in Fiji, Wellington, and then four months in Cambodia, digging into different social justice issues, and talking to people on the ground about what they were doing and the challenges they faced,” she recalls. “It was like pulling back the curtain. You can look at a city like Wellington and think everything’s all right, and then you talk to people and look at it and it’s not alright.”
Neal’s passion for social justice issues crosses over into her art practice, where her favourite media are printmaking and analogue photography. For a recent project she made cyanotypes in the garage of her flat in Mt Roskill – a process that saw her create imagery on A4 pieces of fabric using photosensitive chemicals. She sewed the pieces together to make a quilt, which she photographed on 35mm film in locations significant to her.
Neal is also passionate about exploring how she and her fellow Pākehā can be better Treaty partners. She says she has many more questions than answers about what this looks like and her perspective is constantly changing as she talks to people and learns more. “My journey at the moment is questioning within myself and my whakapapa and putting myself in spaces which challenge deeply-held beliefs,” she says. “It’s unearthing stories that paint a picture of how my whānau came to be in this land and our complicity in colonisation. It’s a lot of learning and unlearning.”
Neal says her interest in te ao Māori stems from her childhood at Ōrākei School, where as Pākehā she was in the minority. It was a formative time for her.
Her connection to the Pinnacle Programme began in 2018, during her final year at Baradene College of the Sacred Heart, when she gained a scholarship to go on the Spirit of Adventure. “Pinnacle has really helped me set goals and be accountable,” she says. “One of the goals I set in my final year of school as captain of the First XI football team was for the team to get in the top three at nationals. We ended up winning for the first time ever, becoming national champions. That was a team effort and a really cool moment.”
Neal says she is grateful for the experiences she’s had with the Pinnacle Programme, including the Outward Bound course and learning leadership skills. The support and mentorship through the programme and her university studies have helped shape her understanding of herself and the world around her.
“Te ao Māori has also encouraged me to look within myself. And I think, for me, the journey is more about what it means to be Pākehā and working out who I am. I think for a lot of people with settler identities in this country, that’s kind of the missing piece. We don’t know who we are.”
She adds, “Ultimately, it’s not about me though. My dream is to bring art, Te Tiriti o Waitangi and communities together.”
