Innholdsfortegnelse for Summer 2019 i Art New Zealand

Auckland Paul Martinson Moa Sanderson Contemporary 10–29 September RICHARD WOLFE The moa of New Zealand have endured a double indignity; extinction at the hands of this country’s earliest human settlers and then misrepresentation by its artists. The first published image of the bird appeared in 1867 in a book by German-Austrian geologist Ferdinand von Hochstetter, who had spent nine months in this country in 1859. That landmark image, of a towering giraffe-like bird, established a pattern which was perpetuated by lofty skeletal arrangements and reconstructions in museums around the world. Since then science has reconfigured the shape of the moa, granting it a much lower and more ground-hugging posture. It has also drastically reduced the number of known species; it was once believed there were as many as…

HERE: Kupe to Cook Pataka Art + Museum, 11 August–23 November curated by Reuben Friend & Mark Hutchins-Pond Some days/I’ve been/on dry land/for too long my ache/for ocean/so great/my eyes weep/waves1 Thus does Tongan poet Karlo Mila express a profound connection with the ocean shared by many inhabitants of what writer Epeli Hau‘ofa famously termed ‘our sea of islands’. Interpenetration of the ocean with Pacific life pervades HERE: Kupe to Cook, even as it juggles two strands of artistic exploration. One strand I identify with the ‘Kupe’ facet of the title―a celebration of ancient and ongoing Polynesian seafaring. The other focuses more on the ‘Cook’ facet ―delving into European incursion and its colonial aftermath. The best works in this show entwine these strands, which otherwise seem to strain apart. A…

A large black-and-white photograph of the back of Colin McCahon’s head, seen in deep shadow with ears extending like radar dishes, greets you at the entrance to A Place to Paint: Colin McCahon in Auckland, curated by Ron Brownson and Julia Waite. McCahon is in the driver’s seat of a pre-war jalopy, his hands grip the steering wheel and his head is cocked slightly to the left as he looks through the windscreen towards the upcoming bend in the road. This is the artist barrelling along in a sun-bleached semi-rural locale, as if he is indeed seeking out a place to paint. A blow-up of a snapshot taken circa 1970 and presumably prised from a family album, it acts as a marker, too, that this showcase of just 25 artworks…

Guy Ngan: Habitation The Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt 18 May–15 September, curated by Sian van Dyk Guy Ngan: Either Possible or Necessary Artspace Aotearoa, Auckland 7 June–7 August curated by Remco de Blaaij & Lachlan Taylor Guy Ngan has received a good deal of attention this year, with two concurrent exhibitions, a book, the establishment of a database of his works in public spaces and a fair amount of media coverage. His work is, in fact, all around us but he has never been exhibited widely, so why now? Ngan was a Hutt Valley resident for decades and late in his life The Dowse Art Museum was working with him on an exhibition when he fell ill and the project was shelved, to be revisited after his death. The…

On the longest wall of the biggest upstairs space at City Gallery Wellington, there are five relatively large paintings. They each have a white ground with lines, and occasional patches or shapes, of blue, black, green and red. Pared-back abstractions, plenty of white wall between them―a monument to a modernist master? If the first temptation is to evaluate the paintings, they might disappoint, appearing somehow thin, rudimentary, undercooked, although the surfaces are layered and textured, and the compositions are intriguing, not formulaic. For me, this slightness is part of the charm. It was courageous of Schoon to exhibit them at the New Vision Gallery in Auckland in 1965, because at that time, in New Zealand, there was little to no abstract painting with so little in it (and it is…

Colin McCahon: There is Only OneDirection, Vol. I 1919–1959 by Peter Simpson Auckland University Press, Auckland 2019 McCahon Country by Justin Paton Penguin Books, Auckland 2019 On the centenary of Colin McCahon’s birth it is fitting that two new books on his life and work have been published. Both are substantial, and indeed Peter Simpson’s is monumental and will run to not one but two large volumes. These together will give total coverage of McCahon’s career. The first discusses the years from 1919 to 1959; the second, not yet published, will complete the coverage until his death in 1987. Simpson’s manuscript was originally written as one work and Colin McCahon: There is Only One Direction should be seen in this light. Both Paton and Simpson’s books are large format…

Laura Williams explores decorative splendour, kitsch, and ribald or enigmatic content with a feminist and maximalist approach. From its inception her painting was figurative, colourful and naive in style. However, it often employs content and commentary antithetical to the commonly childlike visions of the naive artist. Now in her 50s, Williams is sometimes associated, rather uncomfortably, with young, emerging fine art graduates. Untutored, Williams began to paint with focus in 2011, after years of caring for her father. Domestic and cultural detritus were her initial subjects: books, plants, pictures, vases, ceramics and curios, pet budgies, fabrics and flowers. Her themes have since widened to fanciful, highly patterned interior spaces, and lively pastoral scenes with animals and nude figures―mainly male. This year she exhibited at Auckland’s Föenander Galleries (formerly nkb gallery)…

Melvin Day: A Modernist Perspective Waikato Museum Te Whare Taonga o Waikato 22 June–6 October, curated by Mark Hutchins-Pond Among modernist painters Melvin (Pat) Day (1923–2016) has been somewhat undervalued by art historians and critics, or ignored altogether. For example, he was not included in Gordon Brown and Hamish Keith’s seminal 1969 publication New Zealand Painting: An Introduction. It is puzzling because he had a long and productive career, had excellent academic credentials and held influential positions such as Director of the National Art Gallery in Wellington from 1968 to 1978. This neglect is especially striking since his work was stylistically advanced and at the cutting edge of contemporary practice in the 1960s and 1970s. Despite the scale and ambition of his paintings, he has never been accorded the status…

Let us begin at the intersection of two lines. Like the hands of a clock, or a drawing compass laid on its side upon the architect’s desk. Forgotten planks of wood, offcuts stacked for a fire. A complicated crucifix or a simple garden trellis, incorrectly assembled. Yet there is something careful in the way Alberto García-Alvarez has coloured and placed these pieces of wood. They are like sigils, meticulously arranged to summon or to seal, angles and hues chosen to enhance their power . The artist calls his wooden constructions ‘crossings’, but of what? Of objects, of wood over colour, blue over yellow, yellow over dark, over silver? Of ideas, perspectives, emotions, crossing paths, over obstacles, beyond prejudices? Or perhaps these constructions stand in for the act of crossing. A…

Dorothy Kate Richmond (1861–1935) is often mentioned in the history of New Zealand art, but one of the most interesting moments in that narrative is as yet by and large unexplored: it was when she returned to this country at the end of 1903 in the company of the much more widely studied Frances Hodgkins. At this point Richmond, at 42, was identified by her compatriots as (a) the daughter of the late watercolourist James Crowe Richmond and thus (b) a member of the numerous Richmond/ Atkinson English family that had made a considerable contribution to the development of their adopted land in Taranaki, Nelson and Wellington; and (c) an exhibitor at the regional art exhibitions, even during her absence overseas.1 After some weeks reacquainting themselves with their families, in…