DISTURBANCE IN THE GALLERY The Painting of Rudolf Boelee Part 3
Part 3
2010 -
DISTURBANCE IN THE GALLERY The painting of Rudolf Boelee
Article & Excerpts: Greg McGee - A. P. Gaskell – Andrew Paul Wood –Sharon Murphy
Design & Commentaries: Rudolf Boelee
Publisher: Crown Lynn New Zealand Limited
© Rudolf Boelee 2013
International Exhibition 2010 Surrealism Now Bissayo Barreto Foundation, Sant'Anna Convent, Coimbra, Portugal
In stark contrast, Cox's first book, Defence of Madrid, was written immediately after he returned to England from covering the 'Battle for Madrid' in Spain in late 1936. Still relatively new to journalism, Cox was given the opportunity after the London News Chronicle's correspondent in Madrid, Denis Weaver, was captured by Franco's forces. Cox ably covered the conflict from late October to midDecember 1936, but on his return to England found that more senior journalists were now clambering for the opportunity. Realising that he would not be sent back in the short term, Cox prepared a manuscript covering the period he was in Madrid. His eyewitness report, first published in early 1937, has become one of the classic accounts of the Spanish Civil War. It was recently republished in a new edition by Otago University Press on the 70th anniversary of the battle.
Geoffrey Cox When artist Santiago Ribeira first got in touch with me to be part of this show, I could not really see why he would choose me. He liked the intensity of the Exiles portraits and Geoffrey Cox having been a correspondent in Spain during the Spanish Civil War at the height of classic surrealism made that fit.
Persona No.9 (Jean-Louis Trintignant)
curated by Finn Fair
338 Hackney Road London E2 7 AX
2011 Christchurch Earthquake 22 February 12:51pm
I started working on material for "Whaddarya?" during 2011. Robyne and I were displaced from our house in Christchurch, due to the February 22nd earthquake, and my only way to make any work at all was with a little old Dell laptop. New Zealand was in the midst of Rugby World Cup media hysteria, with the 'weight of history' hanging heavily over the team and their coaches. This made me think of all these players who came before and how they would have reacted to this situation (in the professional era). In first instance "Whaddarya?" was a Facebook project, because we were continuously travelling and the only way I could gauge if there was any interest in what I was trying to do, was through regular posts from virtually every public library in the South Island. I like to thank Andrew Paul Wood, Tony Carr, Eugene Huston, Johnny Lardner, Jeffrey Paparoa Holman, Jim Wilson, David Boyce for their useful comments, Tony Carr for giving me the script of Greg McGee's "Foreskin's Lament" and most of all Michael Williams who gave me the idea for this project in the first place
For a whole generation god was only twice as high as the posts. We who know our history by itineraries – the cold war of the ‘50s you say? Oh yes, we remember it well, those front-row problems, Skinner and Bekker. ’59? A mélange of O’Reilly’s creamy thighs, Jackson’s jinks, DB’s size 13s, and a sheep-dog retrieving the ball in a cowpaddock in Morrinsville. Froggies in ’61, Poms again in ’66 –bloody awful! – those artistes of ’68, Villepreux and Jo Maso, a Pinetree bestriding the ‘60s with a sheep under each arm, the Bokkies in ’73 – the ones that didn’t come, that nevermore will come . . . there was one thing we knew with certainty: come winter, we’d be there, on the terrace, answering the only call that mattered – c’mon black! . . . While the nectar flowed till you could almost see the reflection of your youth in its dregs . . passing . . . passing. I know the lore, I know the catechism. - Greg McGee, Foreskin’s Lament, 1981
The whistle blew, there was a glare of sunlight, and we were outside going out onto the field, right out in the open. A roar from the crowd rolled around us enveloping us. A cold easterly breeze blew through our jerseys as we lined up for the photographers, squinting into the low sun. The Southern players looked broad and compact in their black and white jerseys. We gave three cheers and trotted out in the middle. The turf felt fine and springy. We spaced ourselves out. I took some deep breaths to get charged out up with oxygen for the first ten minutes. A Southern player dug a hole with his heel and placed the ball. 'All right Southern? All right Varsity?' called the referee. Both captains nodded. He blew the whistle. The Southern man ran up to kick. 'Thank Christ,' I thought. 'The game at last.' A. P. Gaskell, “The Big Game�, 1947
Rudolf Boelee’s "Whaddarya?" (the title taken from the Greg McGee’s seminal 1981 play Foreskin’s Lament) is a series of prints celebrating that glorious age of rugby when All Blacks played for pride, glory, and camaraderie, and counterpoints it with the modern equivalents that don’t quite fit the spokes model or biological tank moulds. They were roughest of gentlemen, or the most genteel of ruffians. At Eden Park in 1956, Peter Jones scored an extraordinary try in the pivotal fourth test against the Springboks, the All Blacks’ first series win over the Springboks. When asked for comment, he responded “Ladies and gentlemen, I hope I never have to play another game like that in my life. I’m absolutely buggered”. The New Zealand Herald refused to print it and the recording spent the next 30 years buried in the radio archives. In a style ultimately deriving from Andy Warhol’s stereographic treatment of the mass image, many a legendary moustache or cauliflower ear is immortalised in mud brown, dried blood puce, grass green, half-time orange, lager amber, nicotine yellow, and a palette of other assorted colours that would not be out of place in any pub up until the gentrification of the 1980s. The effect is rather like Byzantine saints against the gold ground of icons. Each photograph has that classic look, those telltale aesthetics and semiotics familiar from many a Rugby Annual. It is slightly unexpected to see All Blacks depicted in art this colourfully – black, after all, is nearly synonymous with New Zealand art through the auspices of Colin McCahon and Ralph Hotere. How nice to see All Blacks depicted in art which is not a grotesque pseudo-fascist/pseudo-Socialist Realist Weta Studioregurgitation, or the Volkswagen-like buttocks of a nude and callipygian Anton Oliver as immortalised in oils by Simon Richardson.
This letter is to advise of my interest and financial commitment, via Germinal Press (part of Golden Arm Productions Pty Limited), to produce in traditional paperback or hardcopy format the title Whaddarya? by Rudolf Boelee. As testament of my commitment, I have already posted Whaddarya? on my website as an epublication and provided to my distributors in Australia for posting on various international e-platforms such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble and iTunes. I believe the subject matter and the unique treatment contained in Whaddarya? makes for a compelling financial proposition, especially given the love for the game of rugby in New Zealand. Germinal Press is an independent publishing house based in Sydney, Australia. We produce an eclectic suite of titles ranging from rugby and Mixed Martial Arts to parenting and horror fiction.
Regards Steve Townshend Publisher Germinal Press
Back in our house in November 2011…while unpacking my books decided to make the ‘best book’ collages, as an ongoing poster project for the Pug Design Store site
24 portraits all painted during the second half of 2012; acrylic on hessian on board
The idea for this project came after reading of former Christchurch Art Gallery curator Neil Roberts predicament of living in a perfectly good but red zoned house, was the beginning for these works. The house is significant from a New Zealand art historical perspective; it was designed by sculptor designer Tom Taylor for renowned painter Bill Sutton, who lived there from 1963 until his death in 2000. It seems insane that this great place might just be demolished for no good reason. The new plan for the rebuild will change Christchurch even further, so my work is a type of mapping of what we still have here now. Most of the artists approached, I had known for a very long time and the majority of them have been living and working in this neighborhood as long as I have. Some are still in their houses/studios but others have not been that fortunate, everyone carrying on though in their new circumstances in one way or another. The eastside of Christchurch has always had a proportionately larger population of artists, including: Colin McCahon, Bill Sutton, Rudolf Gopas, Doris Lusk, Tony Fomison, Rita Angus, Leo Benseman. The geographical area for "EASTSIDE" is roughly between Montreal Street / Bealey Avenue / Linwood Avenue / Ferry Road, The project, as an exhibition, is of 24 artist portraits, each a same size painting, 60 x 60 cm: acrylic on hessian on board. The video footage shown with the exhibition is from the Christchurch CBD just after the 6.3 earthquake of February 22, 2011 by Frank Film, makers of "When a City Falls
Templar Street
Neil Roberts
Hills Road
David Mackenzie
Gloucester Street
Robyne Voyce
Woodhouse Street
Alan McLean
Olliviers Road
Jane Zusters
Kilmore Street
Gerard Smyth
Cambridge Terrace
Helm Ruifrok
Slater Street
Adrienne Rewi
Fleete Street
Grant Takle
Jamell Place
Kristin Hollis
North Avon Road
Keith Morant
England Street
Jonathan Smart
Bealey Avenue
Marian Maguire
Abberley Crescent
Martin Whitworth
Edward Avenue
Marilyn RaeMenzies
England Street
Neil Dawson
Otley Street
Nigel Buxton
Linwood Ave
Renata Przynoga
Peterborough Street
Philip Trusttum
Beveridge Street
Robin Neate
Main Road
Roger Hickin
Gloucester Street
Rudolf Boelee
Cashel Street
Sandra Thomson
Brittan Street
Wayne Seyb
Introduction I go down Manchester Street: it's all there. Early sun on the Drawing Room, John Darby Men's Wear, the bike shop on the corner of Tuam below the old sauna parlour, the doorway to my first love's studio, Smith's Bookshop, the Brooke Gifford Gallery over the road, back across the collectibles shops to the barber's – the sign is out, down past the Excelsior pub, looking over to Java for coffee and the red dot moving sculpture. It's where I have been much of my life; Christchurch as was. I turned half a hundred on September 3, 2010, looking forward to the next half-century, and I now find myself saying over and over “there was”, looking back to make sense of the present and future. I take that walk on Google maps street view. It's the only way, because my prim hometown has become a disaster zone perched on the edge of the Pacific. Ironic when Greg and I chose to stay here to bring up our late-life babes in the sometimes-cloying safety of family and the familiar. These old street pictures look “righter” than the new pioneer town with its unexpected views of the Port Hills, vacant sections and containers. My subconscious is waiting for the long-known to return, even though I have been here for all the more than 13,000 shakes. The hold-on-to-the-floor horrors, the leaping-away-from-the-dodgychimney shimmies, the was-that-a-train-or-a-big-one-coming rumbles, standing in St Martins almost on top of the fault on February 22 while the earth bellowed. I know the geology, the soil profiles, the twice-the force-of-gravity heaving of the land, the reddotted faultlines' slashes; but it is taking time to absorb all the changes. I carry so many griefs for people, for places, for the comfortable daily routines, and for the security of solid ground. Everything -- the physical and the emotional, the intellectual and the
spiritual – has been thrown up in the air and is slowly floating down to earth in new patterns.We all try to make sense of our new reality every day, creating new lives, new paths. The artists - the fragile creatives - are helping shaping the narrative of this time, living in a buckled part of town they tell the tales past and present that will endure for our children.The artists, the writers, the film-makers, the photographers have real resilience: keeping the spark to make sense of the inexplicable, the huge, and the life-changing. Our villages remain, communities in which to live and create. “No loss of place is trivial – in our ways, for our own loved places, we grieve.”- Keri Hulme 2013 Why does anyone stay living in a disaster zone? I asked that question when I read of flattened cities, war zones, natural disasters. Now I know. This place and people are in my bones and in my garden. Otautahi/Christchurch is where my family has the web of blood connections that stretch across the city, from my father's childhood home in Madras Street to my great-grandparents' property in Allandale. From the Gladstone where I misspent my youth to two blocks away at the hospital where I bore my children. From The Press building in the Square where I met my beloved, Greg Jackson, to the house in the Botanic Gardens where I played as a child in the wild garden by the river and my close family lived for near 30 years. From the Port Hills where my father's ashes watch over the city to the sea where I body-boarded when carrying my twins and out to the plains. I like the big machinery time we live in; the way great wide spaces are being created. I am amazed by the vastness of what had seemed like a smallish city block when it had buildings rather than one building: another blank canvas for creatives – property owners this time. The best, the worst, the
beautiful and the ugly are all hanging out. Possibilities and potential that this buttoned-down city had locked away. Creating seems easy now, though the journeys back in my head surprise, delight and frustrate me. Feeling the beat, Greg and I danced again at Mollett Street, at 11am in an autumn glow on the gravel replacing the old punk warehouse. No brick-lined midnight lane to enter any more, but warmth on our faces and thirty minutes of pure pleasure. I see wildflowers in the wreckage, seedlings of natives trees, ducks making their ponds in the foundations of demolished buildings. At iconic-to-me sites the dirt underfoot set me wondering how long it had been since that soil had seen daylight; what had happened in that place before it was built over; what the city looked like when it was Otautahi Pa and surrounds; what trees and vegetation were there, what birds sang. Lots of both! says Keri. The presence of ka manu iwi katoa was overwhelmingly loud, so much so that gathered human voices couldn't out-sing the birds. “One of the reasons Kai Tahu kai-karaka call so loudly is – we were attempting to out-call the birds … the late great Irihapeti Ramsden told that one to me and also mentioned that Kai Tahu women would call, in relays, for over an hour when approaching the great southern pa …. loud and long, that's us!” I have so many connections in the web of life here – surprisingly to me also with the artists Rudolf has portrayed: some whose houses I know, some I know, some I know their grandchildren and children, some I drink tea with, some my beloved works with. Tony Fomison’s mother Mrs Fomison lived across the road from my old Avonside house. She grew a wonderful lemon tree that went up one of the front verandah posts and trailed across the verandah just
below the guttering, covered in bright yellow lemons; beautiful! Tony, who was Greg's friend as a young man, grew up in that house and was one of the founding class at Linwood High. I now live in the house belonging to the school's founding deputy principal. When Greg wrote the mayor’s speech for the opening of the Christchurch Art Gallery, he “took” Tony and Phil Clairmont to the opening: they were the only artists mentioned by name in all the speeches and pomp and circumstance. I admired Jane Zusters' work in Wellington thirty years ago; Robyne Voyce and Rudolf Boelee were the almost the first people I met when I returned to live in Christchurch 23 years ago; I lived two doors from Doris Lusk and saw the rooftop views she saw from her window. I love the way Rudolf's portraits strip the subjects down to their emotional bare bones: the strained and set faces with the creative and quake chaos of the workrooms. They help make sense of life here At my bedside I have a huge wood bowl, carved from “the first tree planted on Banks Peninsula by the first missionary “. Hanging from the kitchen door is a shillelagh; a club of knotty wood that my GreatUncle Huia collected from the Botanic Gardens and hung inside the back door of the curator's residence at Rolleston Avenue for late nights in the gardens. My children gather seaweed for our garden from the beach where their great-great-grandparents gathered seaweed. Their future is our shared past which we revisit, over and again, as they and we create the new. After all, my grandmother lived in Chester Street East for over 70 years, saying:“I still haven't got the garden finished.”
Sharon Murphy
Previous pages; all images from the opening and closing of “EASTSIDE” at Eastside Gallery, Linwood Community Arts Centre. The closing of the exhibition featured the virtuoso playing of viola player Anatoliy Zelinskyy. At present a selection of 12 0f the EASTSIDE portraits is at the South Library, Christchurch
Following pages has images of Crown Lynn Galleries with selected works by Robyne and me…
DISTURBANCE IN THE GALLERY The End