The journey of the carved house Hinemihi o Te Ao Tawhito, Hinemihi of the old world, is one defined by cataclysmic events and the unpredictability of elemental forces. Through eruptions, fires, wars and displacement she has endured. Today she is an honoured kuia, revered by her iwi in the United Kingdom and by her original owners and creators, Tūhourangi, as well as by the wider iwi of Te Arawa.

Hinemihi is also an artwork, a taonga of rare beauty whose carvers, Tene Waitere and Wero Tāroi, are celebrated here. She will return to Aotearoa after more than a century standing in the gardens of Clandon Park in Surrey, home of the Onslow family, whose ties to New Zealand date to the tenure of the fourth Earl as Governor in the eighteen-nineties.