Charteris was born in Auckland, adopted into a Pākehā family as a young child, and told he was Māori, before discovering much later that he was of Kiribati, Fijian and English descent.
[4] Between 1986 and 1996, he worked as a carving tutor at Otago and Southland Polytechnics, and the Dunedin College of Education's Arai Te Uru Kokiri Youth Learning Centre.
[6][7] In 1999 Charteris collaborated with jewellers Niki Hastings-McFall and Sofia Tekala-Smith on the exhibition 1 Noble Savage, 2 Dusky Maidens at Judith Anderson Gallery in Auckland, which helped draw attention to a new generation of New Zealand artists of Pacific descent and showed “what contemporary jewellers might offer to contemporary Pacific identity − notably a sense of playful appropriation of Pacific adornment that is ironic and serious at the same time.”[8] The exhibition was accompanied by a publication titled 1 Noble Savage, 2 Dusky Maidens with reproductions of the three artists' work and essays by Mark Kirby, Lisa Taouma and Nicholas Thomas.
[11] The two artists travelled to Kiribati and on their return made a number of works that were displayed at the Auckland War Memorial Museum and the Mangere Arts Centre.
[13] The new work at the Mangere Arts Centre included a large-scale installation titled Te ma (Fish-trap).