Taniwha

Award-winning weaver of stories Gavin Bishop retells a variety of tales about the taniwha of Aotearoa, from the guardians who accompanied waka voyages to present-day inhabitants of the whenua and moana.


Taniwha are all around us.
They are good at hiding or changing their shape.
They can be very tricky.
If you want to meet one,
you have to know what to look for
and where to look.

Describing how the landscape was shaped, and exploring relations between Maori and the sometimes friendly, but more often terrifying, supernatural creatures, these traditional stories are taken to a new level of spooky visual splendour.