Innholdsfortegnelse for Spring 2020 i Art New Zealand

Auckland Ko ratou, ko tatou—On otherness, us-ness Northart, 22 May–12 June SHAMIMA LONE  Ko ratou, ko tatou—On other-ness, usness, an exhibition that pays homage to the New Zealand Muslim community, was set to open on the anniversary of the Christchurch mosque shootings. But then lockdown happened. When Northart reopened, I attended the show. The majority of artwork featured Islamic elements, depicted from the outside. The central perspective was overwhelmingly white and, rather than feeling represented, I felt othered. The exhibition’s opening room displayed an earnest mishmash of otherness. Islamic subject matter was at the centre of Gavin Chilcott’s Pilgrimage to Mecca depicting the Ka’bah, a structure towards which all Muslims face when praying. Jeff Thomson’s Wake, a corrugated-iron water tank with jagged holes in the sides, powerfully explored the idea…

By identifying as a Samoan artist, Fatu Feu’u has helped secure his position as a leading figure in Pacific art. He has acquired chiefly status in his home village, honours and major commissions; yet, the price he has paid is that he is not ranked as highly in the New Zealand art hierarchy as a number of lesser achievers, even though he has lived much of his active career in our country. As he has remarked, in New Zealand there is European art, Maori art and Pacific art, with Pacific art being the smallest in number and least important, as well as poorly represented in major public collections. Samoan art is also linked in some minds to tourist art, decorative and colourful items ornamented with a limited range of motifs…

At the Elam School of Art’s end-of-year prize-giving in 1937, Betty Aislabie and Gennaro Nigro were awarded first and second respectively for Still Life Painting, as well as a second equal and a commendation for Painting from Life.1 Similarly, the following year saw Aislabie awarded first for Painting Head from Life, while Nigro was highly commended for Painting Figure from Life.2 Five years on, in December 1943, and now known as Jan and Gerry (Angelo), they were married. But while Jan Nigro would go on to enjoy a painting career spanning a remarkable 75 years, Gerry’s output was less continuous, broken by a period of a quarter of a century or so before he returned to the easel. The gap in Gerry Nigro’s exhibiting history was largely due to the…

Jeff Thomson has so much old roofing iron and metal in his Helensville workshop/studio/warehouse that, a few years back, he was accused by local residents of interrupting the television reception in the area. The size of a small stadium, his iron-clad workshop has the feeling of a strangely altered depot or transfer station. Not only does it contain a very significant ‘library’ of old iron (awaiting future projects) but also a vast array of completed, abandoned, resumed and partially made sculptures. In the midst of this ferment, the artist’s living quarters are an internal annex. We met there on a blustery, grey morning, 8 July 2020. Possibly on account of electro-magnetic factors hinted at above, the 25-year-old Sony cassette recorder enlisted for the purpose of the interview malfunctioned and, as…

At 80 years old and with a distinguished artistic career now stretching to more than six decades behind him, Mervyn Williams has boldly entered a new phase of development with Late Harvest, an exhibition of sculptures, along with selected earlier works in two dimensions (including paintings and prints). The Jonathan Grant Gallery is showing paintings and prints while the sculptures—a mixture of freestanding and wall pieces—are presented at Artis Gallery. The focus in this essay is on the new work in three dimensions. While most of the sculptures were made in the last two or three years it would be inaccurate to describe these as the first works by Williams in three dimensions; indeed one bronze included (Chatterbox) is dated 2011. As far back as 1988–89 he had experimented with…

After two hours on the sculpture trail at Brick Bay visitors often exclaim to the staff and management, the birdlife is incredible! The trees are outstanding! According to co-owner Richard Didsbury, this is a little disheartening. ‘After all the effort and enterprise we’ve invested in the sculpture trail these people come back raving about the flora and fauna. They are of course wrong. The fantails in their backyards are equal to those here in Matakana. Likewise, similar rimu can be found anywhere in the country. What has changed is their ability to look, to really look, and to see.’ So in a way they are right. Ten minutes into a jaunt around the lakes, through the bush, on the hills, your senses have shifted, so that your perception is heightened,…

With her new exhibition Inheritance, Hannah Kidd’s practice has evolved from primarily depicting animals, often in a light-hearted and accessible way, to a concern with objects that carry the weight of the past. This new direction was inspired by an increasing number of inherited objects entering her own home in recent times. Yet the overriding question inherent to her work persists: how do we as humans relate to the environment around us? Using her signature style of welding flattened pieces of corrugated iron onto a framework of metal rods, Kidd’s newest creations extend her ecocritical approach into a more controversial realm: one that explicitly engages with New Zealand’s colonial past. This is primarily achieved by contrasting colonial antiques such as candelabras, bone china tea sets and vases with mokomokai (Maori…

‘The Maori people have, by virtue of long residence in a temperate climate, diverged considerably from the other branches of the Polynesian Race in their arts and crafts,’ wrote anthropologist, museum director and politician Sir Te Rangi Hiroa in his 1923 paper ‘The Evolution of Maori Clothing’. ‘This divergence is particularly marked in the manufacture of clothing, for the Maori has evolved a variety of garments which are peculiar to New Zealand. A different environment with different material stimulated entirely new inventions or led to the adaptation of a known technique to new requirements or a combination of both.’1 The most significant difference that Te Rangi Hiroa identifies between Maori and other Polynesian textile histories is the lack of a sustained tapa-making tradition in Aotearoa. Tapa, which is also known…

On a clear day in Whanganui you can see Mount Ruapehu glowing in the distance, keeping a watchful eye over the Whanganui River as it makes its way from the mountains to the sea. Tia Huia Ranginui (Ngati Hine Oneone) grew up near Koriniti—one of the settlements dotted along the river. The awa, much like the moon, has its own gravitational pull, eventually drawing Ranginui back from Tamaki Makaurau to Whanganui. Tia Ranginui’s practice is constantly evolving. In the series The Intellectual Wealth of a Savage Mind (2015), she unpacks some of the ongoing effects of neo-colonialism in New Zealand. These large-scale works are both challenging and exciting. Gazing through an indigenous lens, her practice reflects on the long-standing colonial entanglements within Te Ao Maori; navigating the interplay between these…