CHOSEN

CHOSEN

1 - 22 JULY 2024

CHOSEN

CHOSEN is an ensemble exhibition of exceptional quality and cultural significance.

It clearly encapsulates the unique amalgam of Māori, Polynesian and Pākehā histories, cultures and values that sets New Zealand art apart.

The ever-growing international attention now directed to New Zealand art is not simply because of how distinctive and important it is perceived to be, but also due to its equally unmistakable universality.

1 RALPH HOTERE

The Black over the Gold (1992)

acrylic, lacquer, gold leaf on glass in colonial window frame frame: 805 x 707 x 52 mm signed, dated bottom left, titled in reverse script along bottom middle

Ralph Hotere (1931-2013) is acknowledged as one of New Zealand’s most important artists. The critically acclaimed Lo Negro Sobre Lo Oro (The Black over the Gold) series is regarded as amongst his most important works.

“At one end of the Nineties stands the sheer visual excitement of the Lo Negro Sobre Lo Oro series... the images are impossible to consider without Spanish baroque demanding its ancestral input in those clouds of brilliant shimmer and drift and delicate solidarity against celebratory blackness.” 1

“Besides being a painter of such ‘Spiritual’ and emotional darkness, Hotere also captures the earthy, physical dimensions of what Alberti refers to as the ‘negro de Espana’ of all five senses: ‘black sight / black sound / black smell / black taste / the black of the painter’s touch’. Alberti’s poetry – and the Spanish poetic and spiritual tradition to which it belongs – strikes a particular resonant note in Hotere’s visual art. There are both personal and cultural reasons for this affinity. Since his first visit there in the early 1960s, Hotere returned to Spain on a number of occasions. Rural Spanish life would have had much in common with traditional Māori communal life; a shared Catholicism is another factor. Ralph Hotere’s gold and black works, the Lo Negro Sobre Lo Oro series (1991-) highlight his affinity with a tradition that is both elemental and mystical. Hotere’s paintings assert the depth and mystery of all human experience, transcending their maker’s subjectivity to work in an intrinsically objective, universalist way. The Trappist monk Thomas Merton proffered that great artwork realises a ‘spiritual vitality that lifts it above itself’, giving rise to a splendid array of ‘contradictions and possibilities’. That is certainly the paradoxical outcome of these works. The opaque surface can hold the most illuminating image. Darkness can be infused with meaning and reflected of refracted light.” 2

1. Vincent O’Sullivan, Ralph Hotere, Ron Sang Publications, 2008, p.318.

2. Gregory O’Brien, Ralph Hotere Black Light, Te Papa Press / Dunedin Public Art Gallery, 2000, p.31.

First exhibited in the original Lo Negro Sobre Lo Oro exhibition at Aero Club Gallery, Port Chalmers 1992.

2 PAUL DIBBLE

The Lost Garden (2023) cast bronze, 24 carat gold artist proof 1/1 + edition of 2 size: 2245 x 1500 x 995 mm signed, dated on base

Lyrical and fluid, and quite simply beautiful, the huia sits atop the metaphorical circle of life, while looking back. The Lost Garden is a powerful narrative of loss as well as a celebration of being.

Imbued with Dibble’s acclaimed unity of purpose and his singular New Zealand vernacular, the extinct huia sits in judgement on who we think we are and our past behaviours.

Combining the pathos of loss with the plural optimism of our unofficial national flower, the kōwhai, we also witness “form taking precedence” 1 where the interplay “between positive and negative space” 2 is a crucially important and contributing component in this great, moving work.

Paul Dibble (1943-2023) is acknowledged as a great New Zealand sculptor with many public commissions of considerable importance sited around New Zealand and overseas, with the New Zealand War Memorial work in Hyde Park, London, especially significant. He was awarded The Member New Zealand Order of Merit 2005, and an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts, Massey University, 2007.

1. Paul Dibble, quoted in Creative Giants of Palmerston North, 2015. Retrieved from http://www.creativegiants.co.nz/view/artist-index/d/paul-dibble.php 2. Ibid

3 IAN SCOTT

Lattice No. 231 (2011)

acrylic on canvas size on wall: 1440 x 1440 mm frame: 1035 x 1035 x 54 mm signed, dated “July 2011”, titled verso

The endless possibilities to be found in grids of line and colour kept Ian Scott (19452013) experimenting with his Lattice series from the mid-seventies for the rest of his career. Continuing to play with the optical illusions of advancing and receding colour combinations, he began using heavy, offset blocks of colour and variations in band widths to further unbalance the grid arrangements.

In Lattice No. 231 he explores notions of balance and asymmetry as immediately evidenced by its rotation on the wall. This manipulation of form draws our attention to the status of each work as an object as well as a painting; the materiality of the works cannot be ignored. Clearly an invitation to shift our perspectives, the diamond configuration also acts as a diversionary tactic from more subtle changes in the work’s composition.

Rotation on the wall aside, it takes a little time to work out how the grids differ from classic Lattice iterations. The shift is small, but effective. The colour bands in the majority of Scott’s Lattice paintings intersect with the canvas edges at a regular 45 degree angle and in doing so, divide the surface area into a series of symmetrical isosceles triangles. This is not the case in the rotated canvas of Lattice No. 231 however. The bands hit the canvas edges at sharper angles and describe asymmetrical scalene triangles, which provide a frisson of tension between their irregular shape and the overall formality of the composition.

4 SHANE COTTON

Eye (2003)

acrylic on linen

stretcher: 1905 x 2995 x 35 mm

signed, dated bottom right; signed, dated, titled verso

In 2003, Cotton commenced a major new series of paintings which were first exhibited in Shane Cotton Survey 1993-2003, curated by Lara Strongman, at City Gallery Wellington and toured to Auckland Art Gallery in 2004. Eye was part of this new and very significant body of work, heralding a major departure from what came previously.

An ‘all seeing eye’ peers from the canvas, overlain with a tableaux of bull’s eye targets, mokomokai and birds. Each of the foreheads of the floating mokomokai are inscribed with a single gothic font letter, these collectively spelling out “KUA HOU NGA MEA KATOA E” (meaning “everything has become new”, referencing the Bible verse 2 Cor 5:17).

“Painted in a hard-edged pop-style,” 1 “operatic in scale, austere in execution,” 2 “one of the striking features of the 2003 suite of paintings is the use of concentric circles” 3 floating in an “unknown environment… One of the things I’m searching for in the painting is to deliver a space that no one’s ever seen before.” 4

Cotton’s exploration of a contemporary Māori world view traverses the past as much as the present. His “geomorphology” 5 includes “a copy of a photograph by Horatio Gordon Robley… with his collection of [mokomokai] heads displayed on a wall behind him. It’s an horrific image, a deeply shocking one. ‘I wanted to see whether I could take a heavily laden image from our history and say something different with it… they’re really about what it means to have and hold on to a memory or retain a likeness… So, I thought I’d start painting them and see what happened’”. 6

“Birds have a special significance in Māori folklore as messengers from the spirit world,” 7 “a counterpoint to the flux of human affairs. The fantail is a memento mori, the tūī connotes unity, constancy, stability. Cotton sees birds as an anchor point in a continuum, a central counterpoint to the human narrative of this painting.” 8

Detail from Shane Cotton, Eye (2003). Full image overleaf >

1. Robert Leonard, https://robertleonard.org/shane-cotton-cultural-surrealist/

2. Lara Strongman, Shane Cotton, City Gallery Wellington / Victoria University Press, 2004, p.15.

3. John Huria, “Metamorphic Vocabulary: Text and Image in Shane Cotton’s Paintings”, Shane Cotton, City Gallery Wellington / Victoria University Press, 2004, p.132.

4. Shane Cotton, Artist Statement, June 2003.

5 Jim and Mary Barr, “An Argument for Imagery in Shane Cotton,” Shane Cotton, City Gallery Wellington / Victoria University Press, 2004, p.111.

6. Christchurch Art Gallery, Shane Cotton, https://christchurchartgallery.org.nz/collection/2014-033/shane-cotton/ untitled-head

7. Lara Strongman, Shane Cotton, City Gallery Wellington / Victoria University Press, 2004, p.30.

8. John Huria, Ibid p.133.

Shane Cotton, Eye (2003)

5 DICK FRIZZELL

Driving Back From Grahame’s (2023) oil on linen

stretcher: 1200 x 1800 x 35 mm

signed, dated “16/10/2023”, titled bottom right

Driving back from Grahame’s is an iconic masterwork; a song of place.

Beginning (seemingly) at the viewer’s feet, Frizzell pays homage to identity and location in a unique stylistic manner where the languages and rhythms of patterns are the guiding narrative.

Frizzell sees and presents the folding, interlocking rhythms and the flowing role of lines in the landscape as core visual elements. He uses signs and objects as symbols, and engages ascending/descending sensations and angles of sight (which move and alter) as he takes us on a journey into the modified and ordinary, worked and inhabited landscape where use, misuse, neglect and time’s passage are equally weighted.

6 TERRY STRINGER

Being in Time (2021)

cast bronze

artist proof 1/1 + edition of 2

size: 2595 x 605 x 605 mm signed, dated “2022”, “AP” inscribed at foot of sculpture

To begin by acknowledging the wonderful dignity and singular beauty of Being in Time is to firstly bring attention to how completely Terry Stringer has delivered and rendered the work as a whole in each of its individual components.

Being in Time is a nude figure, a face, a collation of body parts when viewed in the round. As the viewer walks around, the presences and images morph seamlessly from one to another so adroitly as to be astonishing: how did that happen? Stringer’s virtuoso mastery and control of what is, in essence, a three-sided cylinder is breathtaking. So too is how he has imbued the figure and face with definite thoughts, feelings and atmospheres. We ask, what is she seeing? The past? The future? Now?

Terry Stringer is widely recognised as one of New Zealand’s leading sculptors and is represented in all major public and many private New Zealand collections. Amongst his public commissions are his Aotea Square Water Sculpture, Auckland, 1979; Grand Head, Wellington, 1987; Risen Christ, Cathedral Square, Christchurch, 1999/2000; The World Grasped, Newmarket, Auckland, 2006; and Dance to the Music of Time, Nelson, 2012. In the 2013 New Years Honours, Stringer was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to sculpture.

7 PAT HANLY

Wintergarden 10 am (1974)

enamel on board

frame: 1070 x 1070 x 32 mm

panel: 910 x 910 mm

signed, dated bottom right; titled, dated verso

“Hanly pitches his colours into a bright range where the primaries, red, yellow and blue are all present side by side…” contributing “an intense, sensory experience that is characteristic of his painting… the garden can be seen like the biblical Eden, a paradise but one containing the potential for temptation and loss of innocence.” 1

It is highly likely – even when the titling might be suggestive of the Auckland Domain’s ‘hothouse’ - that the ‘actual’ location and impetus for this work was in fact the luxuriant Windmill Road home garden created by Gil and Pat Hanly where his studio was located. Directly informing the large majority of his Garden Series works, it is equally clear that Hanly was celebrating the joy of Auckland and Pacific light. “His work no longer seeks to express the line and nature of New Zealand light and land but rather to come to a close, almost organic understanding of it. There is an expression of life, of nature, not as static but as something alive. The quality of the paint itself expresses the quality of the landscape.” 2

The immersive Wintergarden 10 am also contains a noticeably ambiguous element: nominally that of the garden, the time of day and its light, it celebrates abundance and suggests – particularly in the outlining – the presence of two cojoined figures, one male, one female. And this, once comprehended, results in the painting developing a broader and deeper humanistic dialogue so typical of his major works.

Pat Hanly (1932-2004) is one of the most significant figures in contemporary New Zealand painting. “His art heralded new ways of thinking about this country… to those who could see the vital place the island nation could have within Polynesia and the broader Pacific. His work is acknowledged as the most vivid, animated body of paintings by a single artist to have yet hailed from these shores.” 3

1. Michael Dunn, Webbs: Fine NZ Paintings, Jewellery& Decorative Arts, 30 March – 1 April 2004, p.40.

2. John Daly-Peoples, Craccum quoted in Russell Haley, Hanly A New Zealand Artist, Hodder & Stoughton, 1989, p.162.

3. Gregory O’Brien, Pat Hanly, Ron Sang Publications, 2012, inside cover.

8 CHRIS CHARTERIS

Great Southern Ocean (Triple Strand) (2022)

triptych; Southland granite and hardstone, stainless steel cable size on wall: 2320 x 1056 x 150 mm (variable)

Chris Charteris’ iconic necklace works combine the specifics of place with harmonic metaphors of love and the sensations of journeying.

Plural as well as disarmingly beautiful, Charteris builds monumentally simple, poignant emblems of the Pacific while celebrating the cultures it contains.

In this manner, he “elevates the traditional form from functional or decorative to Contemporary Art, suggesting both contemporary and traditional objects have complex readings and meanings.” 1

Chris Charteris’ work draws from his unique and diverse identity and at the core of his practice is the cross-pollination and universality of cultural forms. Adopted into a Pākehā family and told he was Māori (which led him to study traditional Māori carving) Charteris later discovered he was of Kiribati, Fijian and English descent. His sculptures reflect not only his own personal history and journey of identity.

Since 1996 he has exhibited in many solo and group exhibitions in New Zealand and internationally. His works are in a number of public and private collections including Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, the Dowse Art Museum, the British Museum and the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

1. Gerald Barnett, Chris Charteris, Real Art Roadshow, 2015. Retrieved from http://www.realartroadshow.co.nz/ essays/Charteris

9 GRETCHEN ALBRECHT

Illumination (3) (1978)

acrylic on canvas frame: 1864 x 843 x 48 mm signed, dated bottom right

Illumination (3) with its long plunging verticals, intimations and organic imagery is a major work.

It unites Albrecht’s singular visual dexterity with her remarkable capacity to establish and transmit profoundly uplifting sensations. We experience numerous diffuse allusions, witness the sun and light’s presence as if it is emerging from behind and through the work itself.

Ron Brownson, in the 2002 Auckland Art Gallery publication Illuminations wrote of Albrecht’s rare ability to link “spiritual emanation and a physical incarnation” and “to speak with colour, to touch with shape, to hear with time and to savour… Her imagination looks at colour and imagines it as an incarnate seeing…” 1

Directly informed by a major commission undertaken for an operatic adaptation of Tristan and Iseult by composer Gillian Whitehead, Illumination (3) is an outstanding, distinctive work which contains multitudes, where “thoughts, feelings and sensations are making journeys” 2 and morphing as we experience and absorb its very being.

Gretchen Albrecht is one of New Zealand’s pre-eminent painters, awarded The Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2000. She has exhibited extensively here and internationally over five decades. A major monograph, Gretchen Albrecht: Between Gesture and Geometry by Luke Smythe, Massey University Press, 2023 was republished recently.

1. Ron Brownson, Gretchen Albrecht: Illuminations, Auckland Art Gallery / Random House, 2002 p.9-15 2. Ibid, p.21.

10 LISA REIHANA

Whitianga <<>> The Crossing (2018) from Tai Whetuki - House of Death Redux 12 lightboxes, archival pigment print on backlit film, LED edition 1/1 + 1 artist proof lightboxes: 840 x 1500 x 75 mm each

Comprised of 12 lightbox-mounted stills, drawn from Lisa Reihana’s acclaimed video Tai Whetuki – House of Death Redux (exhibited at Auckland Art Gallery, Walters Prize, 2016)

Whitianga <<>> The Crossing explores Māori cultural practises and beliefs surrounding death and mourning, describing the journey from the land of the living to that of the dead. Hine-nui-te-pō, the goddess of death and the night, guides a dead warrior through an underworld where land and people are intimately entwined.

The sense of travel through an uncommon and unnerving land plays out in the visual metaphors Reihana has created. Strong vertical and diagonal lines created by beams of light and tree-forms create paths and thresholds for the viewer to follow and cross. The dense textures and muted light combine in some works with a shallow picture field to suggest a clinging, suffocating closeness.

In At the Gate the point of view angles up acutely from the leaf litter to meet the light streaming past the figure in the portal; the viewer sees through the eyes of the traveller witnessing spirit-beings and humankind enmeshed in a tangled profusion of damp undergrowth and twisted tree limbs; they are of the land and the land is of them.

Regarded “as one of the most influential artists of the decade,” 1 Lisa Reihana represented New Zealand at the Venice Biennale 2017 with the internationally acclaimed In Pursuit of Venus (infected) video work. Her work is represented in major collections worldwide and she has recently undertaken substantial commissions for Sydney Modern and the National Gallery of Singapore. She has been at the forefront of the considerable international attention and recognition of New Zealand contemporary art worldwide.

1. Michael Brand, Director, Art Gallery of NSW in “Who Was the Most Influential Artist of the Decade?” Artnet News, https://news.artnet.com/art-world/most-influential-artist-of-the-decade-1728387, 23 December 2019.

At the Gate from Whitianga <<>> The Crossing (2018)

Complete series of 12 images from Whitianga <<>> The Crossing (2018) overleaf >

To view the complete exhibition catalogue for Whitianga <<>> The Crossing click here

CHRIS BOOTH

Hawks Crag (2015)

South Island granite, stainless steel installation: 3070 x 1000 x 200 mm (variable)

Chris Booth is a major figure in New Zealand sculpture with “his own highly recognisable sculptural language.” 1 Employing a deeply informed Māori sensibility for the land and time itself as well as a closely allied “Japanese reverence for nature… the result looks effortless and perfectly authentic.” 2 His works are monumental in scale and build a profound environmental discourse.

Booth’s works are also direct responses to specific geographical locations and demonstrate acute understandings of geological history, close observation of nature and represent “the idea of making landscape into sculpture.” 3 Hawks Crag is “unique” capturing “aspects of topography, natural history, and landscape forms already extant.” 4

Chris Booth has undertaken significant public sculpture commissions throughout New Zealand and in Australia, the Netherlands, United Kingsom, Germany, Italy, Denmark, France and Canada.

1. Edward Lucie-Smith, Foreword, Woven Stone: The Sculpture of Chris Booth, Godwit, 2007, p. 8.

2. Ken Scarlett, Ibid p. 289.

3. Edward Lucie-Smith, Ibid p. 8-9.

4. John Grande, Art, Space, Ecology, Black Rose Books, 2019.

ISRAEL TANGAROA BIRCH

Kōwhaiwhai - The Spirit of Survival (2023) pigments, lacquer on etched stainless steel panel: 2395 x 995 x 45 mm

Delivered in Israel Birch’s trademark diamond-shape, liquid and alive, subtle and softly weighted, rippling with light and luminous colour; resonating with meaning, rich with symbols and spirituality, and the architecture of the wharenui, it is as if we are transitioning between worlds and existence as the artist explores the foundational language of kōwhaiwhai and its “role in visualising our mātauranga knowledge systems, and also our dreams and aspirations.” 1

Birch, in carving and layering the surface of the steel with the side-by-side presence of geometric pattern and organic whorls, alters spatial depth, shifts perspectives and densities back and forth. He builds endless illusions of depth and space so that we glimpse the ineffable.

He harnesses the language of abstraction, using pattern and optical rhythms, with his technical control now so adroit that we see images, patterns and whorls advancing and receding side by side. This significantly increased holographic presence and complexity adds layer upon layer of symbolic nuance, spiritual sensation, and visual experience.

1. Israel Birch, Artist statement, 23 July 2023.

13 LONNIE HUTCHINSON

Hibiscus Cave (2021)

118 piece installation; brushed, powdercoated aluminium

installation size on wall: 3260 x 5000 mm

Linking Lonnie Hutchinson’s Sāmoan and Māori whakapapa, Hibiscus Cave is directly informed by the rock drawings at the Takiroa cave site at Duntroon, North Otago. The larger kōkōwai (red ochre) shapes recall the Duntroon human figures and also carving in general. The smaller cut-out shapes reference seaweed around the coast of Te Waipounamu, providing another narrative link to the seasonal, migratory usage of the caves.

In this major work, Hutchinson’s characteristic use of positive and negative space builds considerable visual rhythms where pattern and shadows float in space as well as back and forth across time.

Lonnie Hutchinson has undertaken major commissions throughout the country. Her works are held by significant institutions including Auckland Art Gallery, Christchurch Art Gallery, National Gallery of Australia, Queensland Art Gallery of Contemporary Art and The Hocken Library.

14 TOSS WOOLLASTON

Unknown Landscape, USA (1990s)

oil on canvas frame: 1864 x 843 x 48 mm

Toss Woollaston (1910-1998) is regarded as one of the most important New Zealand painters of the 20th century.

After the death of his wife Edith, Woollaston became a close friend of Ann Martindell who had been the United States Ambassador to New Zealand from 1979-81. They spent time travelling in the USA together. From the 1970s onward, at the suggestion of his lifelong dealer Peter McLeavey, Woollaston began to work on a larger scale and this directly resulted in the widely acclaimed outstanding paintings of his late career.

Unknown Landscape, USA is a work “of great energy and dynamism.” 1 Containing profound sensations of his painting process and of actually being there, he harnesses the geomorphology of the place into a sequence of moods, atmospheres and mutating presences.

Liquid, alive and ever-changing, this remarkable painting seems to be having a very direct conversation with the core plein air watercolour process he employed right through his career, and to unite them. The gestural, dancing brushstrokes animate every aspect of this most enthralling work.

1. Jill Trevelyn, quoted in William McAloon, Art at Te Papa, Te Papa Press, 2009, p.253.

15

MILAN MRKUSICH

Monochrome Red, Four Areas (1979)

acrylic on hardboard panel: 1187 x 1225 x 30 mm signed, dated, titled verso

“It is crucial that, as in so much of Mrkusich’s work, the appearance of a rigorous system – a mathematical structure – is only part of the equation. The specific, overall effect… depends on sensitively adjusted proportions, and on decisions made by the artist on the basis of intuition and aesthetic feeling, not purely by mathematical rule… Mrkusich subtly manipulates the proportions of his paintings in response to an optical phenomenon… Paradoxically, an optically perfect square is obtained by making it irregular – by increasing its height.” 1

Milan Mrkusich (1925-2018) is acknowledged as “New Zealand’s leading abstract painter. By the early 1970s he had established himself at the forefront of modernist developments in New Zealand, held in the highest esteem by critics and artists alike for his resonant, mesmerising fields of colour. Throughout his career Mrkusich drew on ideas from art theory, alchemy and phenomenology as well as the work of international artists… to create his unique style.” 2

1. Alan Wright and Edward Hanfling, Mrkusich: The Art of Transformation, Auckland University Press, 2009, p.83.

2. Ibid, inside cover

16 YUKI KIHARA

Only Time Will Tell (2022)

Sāmoan ie tōga (pandanus leaf, feathers), mannequin, shoes

installation: 1190 x 2590 x 2680 mm

At the Auckland Town Hall, on the 1st of August 2021, an apology was made by the New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Adern, to Pacific peoples regarding the historical actions in the 1970s and 1980s collectively termed the “dawn raids.” It took the form of an Ifoga, a Sāmoan custom of dispute resolution, in which the participant publicly humiliates themselves by being covered with an ie tōga (Sāmoan fine mat) as an act of asking for forgiveness for their or their kin’s wrongdoing.

Following acceptance of the Ifoga by members of the Pacific community, Prime Minister Adern spoke about her wishes for the future and announced government funding and assistance as a form of reparation.

Kihara’s Only Time Will Tell is a powerful, poignant life-size sculpture which looks upon the past as it memorialises that event and its key narratives while challenging and asking about the future and changes in the lives of Pacific peoples in New Zealand.

Yuki Kihara represented New Zealand at the Venice Biennale 2022 with the internationally acclaimed Paradise Camp. Her work is represented in significant collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum, New York; the British Museum; the National Gallery of Australia and many more too numerous to list. Paradise Camp opens in the Sainsbury Centre, Norwich in March 2025 before undertaking a tour of the United Kingdom and Europe.

17 FRANCES HODGKINS

Gipsy Caravan (1901)

watercolour on paper frame: 590 x 488 x 32 mm

mat window: 310 x 237 mm signed, dated lower right

“Early in February 1901 Frances Hodgkins sailed for Europe… at a time of great change and vitality in French art,” 1 where “she painted assiduously” 2 “in a style derived… from French Impressionism” 3 remaining “in these first European years a watercolourist.” 4

In December Hodgkins and artist Dorothy (D.K.) Richmond travelled through Italy – “the two friends were glad to settle into a cheap clean inn at Rapallo. The town was full of beautiful models, among them members of a gipsy family living in a caravan. In a letter written in December 1901 from Rapallo, Frances described an early conception of this plein air painting: the father gipsy has a wooden leg, the father’s friend has one eye but the donkey, the two eldest daughters of the house and the sons are beautiful and it is them I am painting lighting a fire while the blue smoke curls across the green caravan and a bright jumble of colour in which the donkey and all their bright coloured clothes help to join a harmonious whole.” 5

“Human activities… add life and a moment in time to her work… more often than not the figure is a compositional device used to explore its relationship to space or… the rhythms created when groups of people work at a similar task. They are often depicted from behind, their kneeling forms like so many bundles of washing in close proximity.” 6

1. Iain Buchanan, Elizabeth Eastmond and Michael Dunn, Frances Hodgkins: Paintings and Drawings, Thames and Hudson, 1995, p.16.

2. E.H. McCormick, Portrait of Frances Hodgkins, Auckland University Press / Oxford University Press (1981), p.42.

3. Buchanan, Eastmond, Dunn, Op. cit. p.17.

4. Ibid, p.17.

5. E. H. McCormick, Op. cit. p.42.

6. Catherine Hammond and Mary Kisler (editors), Frances Hodgkins European Journeys, Auckland Art Gallery / Auckland University Press, 2019, p.49-50.

18 CHRIS BAILEY

Kaitiaki (2023)

cast, burnished bronze edition 8/10 sculpture: 1106 x 400 x 430 mm

Kaitiaki is the third work of Chris Bailey’s important Te Werowero (The Ongoing Challenge) series where he has been exploring the challenges his people face daily protecting sites of significance on Waiheke Island. Each work adopts one of the various stances used when carrying out the wero (formal challenge to visitors arriving at marae).

“This series was a response to the desecration of a foreshore urupā on Waiheke that I was involved in protecting as well as trying to raise awareness around the delicate state of Tīkapa Moana Hauraki Gulf.” 1

A Kaitiaki (guardian) is appropriate to mark an entrance. While he is a sentinel, on watch, “ready to protect the Taiao and wāhi tapu as need be,” he is clearly inviting “visitors to use their manners and respect the area they are about to enter.” 2

Cast in bronze, Kaitiaki’s dark patina explicitly references the practice of burning the surface of wooden sculptures to toughen and protect the wood. The cross-hatching on the surface similarly directly references wood and carving techniques. Crossing time but firmly grounded in the past, it acknowledges manaakitanga practice of greeting and welcoming guests to the marae and the home.

To view a 360 degree video of Kaitiaki (2023) click here.

1. Chris Bailey, email correspondence with Stephen Higginson, 16 June, 2024. 2. Ibid.

19 DICK FRIZZELL

Red Painting (2018)

oil on canvas

stretcher: 2208 x 1800 x 33 mm

signed, dated “8/1/2018”, titled bottom right

Red Painting is a major example of Frizzell’s unique and idiosyncratic engagement with the vernacular of the hand-drawn, home-made signs commonly seen along the roadsides of the rural communities of New Zealand.

Frizzell has taken the mundane into a completely new realm where colour, space and line on the canvas is as important as the words and phrases. He uses the words and phrases as devices of form and as structural components as well as for what they areencapsulations of meaning and intent.

Red Painting also openly operates as a commentary on New Zealand’s social fabric, the separation between urban and rural communities, between individual enterprise and corporations. Employing his trademark humour and wit, Frizzell is repurposing throwaway elements of the rural mundane into a significant, cohesive, singular painting. The ‘words and phrases’ are in this manner ‘transformed’ and read differently, their meaning slipping, sliding and becoming new.

20 LISA REIHANA

Kurangaituku (2001) from Digital Marae series crystal flex on aluminium edition 3/5 + 2 AP panel: 2000 x 1000 x 28 mm

Kurangaituku, part-woman part-bird supernatural being in Māori mythology, and a nurturing caretaker of birds and other creatures, was said to have been betrayed and defeated by Hatupatu, the youngest of a family of brothers who arrived on the Arawa canoe and who lived on Mokoia Island in the centre of Lake Rotorua. Kurangaituku, described as having wings on her arms, claws instead of fingers and a beak instead of a mouth, is also said to have been an ogress or a witch. Hatupatu hunting for birds in the forest encounters her and runs away but is caught and taken to her cave.

Kurangaituku, from Lisa Reihana’s acclaimed Digital Marae extended series of works, is redolent with myth, menace and profound sensations of flight. Reihana presents Kurangaituku emerging from her paua-shell lined cave, her eyes fixed on the viewer, claws ready as if reaching out for Hatupatu.

Lisa Reihana is a multi-disciplinary artist who has significantly influenced the development of contemporary Māori and New Zealand art. She represented New Zealand at the Venice Biennale 2017 with In Pursuit of Venus (Infected) which received extraordinary acclaim and has been continuously on show around the world since. In 2014 she received an Arts Foundation Laureate Award, and in 2018 became a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit.

21 PAUL DIBBLE

Listening to Stillness (2023)

cast bronze

artist proof 1/1 + edition of 5

size: 2110 x 385 x 330 mm

signed, dated on base

Mixing sensuousness with privacy, as if caught in a moment of indecision or inner discourse, where the nuances of the body add further elements of discombobulation and emotional breadth, the compelling Listening to Stillness becomes a diverse mix of moods, presences and atmospheres.

Dibble’s career-long, confident use and adaptation of the geometric cone and ball, the role of line and flattened volume together builds these distinctive sensations and conversations: it’s as if Listening to Stillness has been drawn in space, right in front of us.

He uses portions of circles, stretched rectangles, parallel lines, flat surfaces and squeezed space to summarise and paraphrase what we know to be there, and where. The incised nipples on the chest stare back as if another face is looking out and back at us. The long arms hide and reveal, while at the same time an under-stated dream-like, time-travelling elegance and laudable dignity pervades.

Paul Dibble (1943-2023) stands as the colossus at the epicentre of New Zealand sculpture. In his long and most distinguished career, he pioneered and delivered many very notable, distinctive and unforgettable works. He is represented in all collections of importance. Numerous books on his work have been published.

22 IAN SCOTT

Untitled (1966) diptych; acrylic on canvas frame: 1763 x 2071 x 55 mm signed, dated verso

By the mid-60s Ian Scott (1945-2013) was already ahead of his time by appropriating and contrasting imagery. He was also wanting to distance himself from the loosely brushed style of McCahon (then a painting lecturer at Elam). In 1967 (his honours year at Elam) Scott wrote a thesis entitled “New Realism and Pop Art.”

In his thesis he pioneered an entirely new conversation in New Zealand art about both the New Zealand landscape and human presence in and upon it. Openly acknowledging the influence of Pop Art, especially Roy Lichtenstein, Scott used ironic contrast as a fundamental pictorial device.

The extraordinarily innovative Untitled places the completely disparate together in a vertical triptych – a tourist landscape being observed if not actually experienced; a vignette of Auckland overlooking the harbour with a pōhutukawa blooming; a portion of a weather-boarded house where the vanishing point perspective leads the eye to portions of a wilderness.

23 COLIN MCCAHON

Kauri Tops (1957)

oil on hardboard

frame: 780 x 610 x 35 mm

visible image: 595 x 424 mm

signed bottom right; signed, dated, titled verso

McCahon’s paintings of 1953 to 1958 are informed by the forest and the bay of Titirangi, where it was “all closeness and profusion, lushness and humidity” defining a place “whose name is translated as ‘fringe of heaven’. The forest and the bay became a laboratory of light and a gentle landscape cathedral.” 1

“The pleasure of McCahon’s indigenised cubism” 2 is that he made “the style answer to local conditions” and in this “he found new space in which to move and develop.”

Kauri Tops is a painting “born of visual revelation” which seeks to “pass that revelation on to us. Every day we open our eyes and the ‘world’ out there forms within us, a place refracted physically but also spiritually, emotionally, intellectually. McCahon’s Titirangi paintings are expressions of gratitude for that moment of coming-to-see. And in expressing that gratitude, they start to move us from matters of perception towards ones of spirit.” 3

Colin McCahon (1919-87) is widely recognised as an outstanding figure in twentieth century art. He is credited with introducing modernism to New Zealand in the mid-20th century, regarded as New Zealand’s most important modern artist, particularly in his landscape works.

1. Justin Paton, McCahon Country, Auckland Art Gallery / Penguin, 2019, p.73.

2. Ibid, p.75.

3. Ibid, p.75.

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