(b. 1970)

Ngāti Porou

Lives in Rotorua

Stacy Gordine is an innovative bone and stone carver, who has recently moved to large-scale public sculpture.

Stacy transforms Māori art forms through surprising shifts in scale and translations in different media.

Working with high-precision tools, he is known for miniaturising Māori sculptural forms associated with architecture, such as poupou and poutokomanawa, which are uncannily animated with exquisite features, or manipulating classic forms of small adornment; for instance, shaping bone or stone into a mako niho (shark tooth) at the size of a fish species long since extinct.

A descendant of Pine and Hone Taiapa, Stacy is Te Tumu Whakairo (lead tutor) at Te Takapū o Rotowhio (School of Bone and Stone Carving) at the New Zealand Māori Arts and Crafts Institute in Rotorua, and designed the sculpture, Te Ahi Tupua (2020), installed outside the Institute at the city’s southern entrance.