History man

Twenty-three years ago, when Headlands, the last large scale New Zealand exhibition to be sent to Australia (#WTF?), was shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, all hell broke loose. One of the essays in the catalogue, At the Centre, in the Margins started an at times bitter debate about the appropriation of Maori imagery by contemporary artists who did not identify as Maori. The essay had argued that by translating the koru form into a design motif and denying its Maori reference as part of the work, Gordon Walters had ripped off that particular element of Maori visual culture. This was an appropriation too far. The author of the piece Rangihiroa Panoho was roundly condemned by Walters supporters for daring to make this sort of assertion, particularly at a time when we were trying to impress the Australians on their home ground. 

Now wind the clock around a few times. Later this year the same Rangihiroa Panoho will publish his book Maori Art: History, Architecture, Landscape & Theory. The book itself has apparently been on the go since the year Headlands opened in Sydney when Panoho was offered a contract by an Australian publisher. Its by-line is 'how to look at Maori art in the twenty-first century' so still room for someone to tackle the twentieth or even the nineteenth century. 

Even stepping outside the Maori perspective this substantial book won't exactly be entering a crowded field of New Zealand art history. We have shelves full of monographs, group show catalogues, collection spruiking, and picture books, but very few ambitious histories. Gordon Brown and Hamish Keith's book Introduction to New Zealand Painting was published 56 years ago and is still widely cited and Gil Docking's effort Two hundred years of New Zealand Painting (now hilariously called 240 years of New Zealand Painting) in 1971. The nearest to a recent history would be Francis Pound's The Invention of New Zealand from 2009. So anyone with a history of NZ art in the works, let us know and we can all celebrate. But for now we have Rangihiroa's Maori Art to look forward to, it's launching in June. You can follow its emergence here. We can only hope it proves as provocative as his essay all those years ago in Headlands.

Q&A

Along with most art museums in NZ the Auckland Art Gallery posted tributes to Ralph Hotere on its blog Outpost. The posts were a powerful reminder of how quickly art museums can respond in situations like this to show they are an integral part of the wider art community. Included in the Auckland Art Gallery post was some info about the installation of Hotere’s 18 meter long mural Godwit/Kuaka. Apparently there were discussions with Hotere himself about how the new long corridor space at the Gallery perfectly matched the corridor where the mural had been originally installed at the Auckland International Airport. Later in the post, however, it also said the mural had been displayed on “the rear wall of the airport’s Arrivals Hall.” Confusing, but interesting just the same.

In less than half an hour there was a comment on the blog from someone who had been responsible for airport civil maintenance at the time the Hotere mural was at the Airport. The Auckland Art Gallery had it wrong, he said. Hotere’s mural was not in a corridor and nor was it in a ‘welcoming Arrival Hall’ but in the incoming passenger processing area. (It was Pat Hanly and Robert Ellis’s works that hung in the corridor). OK, so now what?

Well, nothing really. A couple of weeks later and there has been no response from the Gallery and it really feels like a lost opportunity. Is the Airport guy right? And if so what’s all the stuff about being in a the corridor about? And where exactly was it hung? It was an unusual chance to discuss an interesting and topical piece of art history, and it could have almost been done in real time. The thing is many people have these blogs on RSS feeds and read comments like this as they land. OK sure you might get some silly responses but to leave questions like this hanging misses a great opportunity to build interest, build audiences and clear up the corridor thing all at the same time.

Image: Ralph Hotere’s 1977 Working drawing for the central panels of the Auckland International Airport mural in the Hocken Library collection. In his book Native wit Hamish Keith who commissioned the work states that the Hotere hung in the Customs hall. 

COMMENT: (Andrew)  "I'm glad someone has finally cleared that up. Although I really enjoy the experience of swimming through the waves of colour that accompany you down the new corridor, it doesn't come close to the magnificent experience of seeing it whole when it was first shown at Auckland Art Gallery as part of the Out the Black Window exhibition. I've always wondered how people had mistaken 'arrivals hall' to mean a hallway when it was more of a town hall. The airport guy is right. The processing area (or customs hall) was basically the baggage hall, which it hung high above - I'm quite well acquainted with an ex-airport gal who worked under the mural for many years. We've been mystified for a while about the corridor thing."

From the stream

Byrt and Keith slug it out as to what sort of art gallery Auckland actually has. 

(You can view the full conversation by putting “we have a historical institution with a bit” into the Twitter search box.)

Shock corridor

There was a time when you disembarked at Auckland’s international airport that New Zealand was presented as a contemporary creative culture thanks to some pushing by Hamish Keith. Today the large murals painted by Ralph Hotere, Pat Hanly and Robert Ellis are long gone. OK, it was around 1 AM and it wasn’t the best series of flights we’ve ever had, but these days the international passenger entry – “designed to capture the essence of what makes us uniquely kiwi” – is plain scary. There’s a corridor of large photographs of people-less New Zealand, a few photographed artefacts from Te Papa, a bizarre wall of fake windows with photographs of clouds (come on, we’ve been looking at nothing else for the last 11 hours) and an exceptionally ugly traditional carved gateway. Did we mention the National Programme-like bird soundtrack? Well, there’s one of those too. The cultural highlight has got to be when you pass through the chirruping Maori carving into the booze section of the duty free stores to be greeted by the nearest thing you’ll see to a Pakeha Haka as a tribe of salespeople step forward and challenge you to buy something before you hit Customs. Contemporary art certainly isn’t the only way to show off our sophistication to visitors, but when you look at the alternatives, it is a good one.

Image: Mood photo collaged by OTN from a photograph by Wesley Fryer