Robin White’s Beginner's Guide to Gilbertese

Gallery Guide Shahriar Asdollah-Zadeh introduces work by Robin White on show in the Toi Aotearoa exhibition.

The second Gibbs gallery includes 1980s artworks. Robin White’s woodblock prints, made during her time in Kiribati, are included. They are titled: I am doing the washing in the bathroom (1983), The Canoe is in the bareaka (1983), Michael is sleeping on the bed (1983) and The Maneaba (1983). These prints, made soon after White's arrival in Kiribati, comprise a series titled Beginner's Guide to Gilbertese. They relate to her adjustment to living in a new environment and culture and learning a new language.

Robin White studied at Elam School of Fine Art in the 1960s under the guidance of teachers like Colin McCahon. White is well known for her refined painting style and screen prints of rural New Zealand landscapes, towns and the people. She has produced many images associated with New Zealand identity.

White’s hard-edged paintings are an important contribution to the development of the New Zealand 'regionalist' style. Her work from 1968 to 1979 often depicted a single, isolated figure set against the landscape. The layers of sharp lines give her images a clarity that celebrates the vitality of New Zealand’s culture and community. An example of this is her painting Maketu fish and chips (1975) – previously on display in the third room of the Gibbs galleries. This painting captures the feeling of pride in rural towns. The strong elements that had defined her trademark style in the 70s were carried into her woodblock print compositions in the 80s and 90s.

White moved to the Republic of Kiribati in the central Pacific along with her family in 1982. She lived there for 17 years before returning to New Zealand in 1999. White is a Baha’i and her reason for moving to Kiribati with her family was to provide voluntary support for the growing Baha’i community within the region. White’s daily interactions with the local community directly influenced her work.

White had to adapt to her new environment as an artist. Her perspective shifted from being surrounded by the mountainous New Zealand landscape to living on a remote atoll. White soon realised that continuing to paint in oil on canvas was unsuited to the circumstances in her new Pacific island environment. She moved to woodblock printmaking as the process was more manageable and wood was readily available.

The comic book-like compositions tell a story of daily life adapting to the islands. The images of the people she met, where she lived and ate is important in her works. The flat perspective depicts images of domestic life and landscape similar to her New Zealand regionalist painting style. The works represent scenes overlaid with memory and experience. Robin White’s recent projects are a continuation of her interest in working collaboratively with Pacific Island artists, using traditional tapa-making practices as a way of addressing contemporary themes. White has gained experience working with tapa (bark-cloth) during her collaborative projects with local artists in Fiji and Tonga. Her previous installations using this medium, shown in the Sixth Asia Pacific Triennial (Brisbane, 2009), Kermadec group exhibition (Tauranga, Auckland, and Wellington 2012) and Ko e Hala Hangatonu: The Straight Path at Two Rooms Gallery in March this year.


Image credits (clockwise from top left):
Robin White
I am doing the washing in the bathroom 1983
woodblock 
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, purchased 1983

Robin White
The Canoe is in the bareaka 1983
woodblock 
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, purchased 1983

Robin White
Michael is sleeping on the bed 1983
woodblock 
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, purchased 1983

Robin White
The Maneaba 1983 
woodblock 
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, purchased 1983

The fascination with the savage ‘Other’

A look at the Lounge room Tribalism series of paintings by Graham Fletcher in Home AKL by Gallery Guide Shahriar Asdollah-Zadeh

Western cultures have always had a fascination with the ‘other’. The term ‘other’ is derived from the concept of Orientalism and the Arabesque, with the West colonising the ‘savage’ and indoctrinating them into the new world, supposedly civilising them towards global integration. Unfortunately, Colonialism still exists in complex forms today.

Graham Fletcher’s series of paintings and sculptures Lounge Room Tribalism combines the familiar and the unknown, the primitive and the modern. Home AKL includes two paintings and five sculptures from this large body of work. By introducing the ideas of the fascination with the ‘other’ to the audience in the first room, the curators set the tone for the exhibition.

Graham Fletcher, Untitled, 2010
from Lounge Room Tribalism
oil on canvas, The University of Auckland Art Collection

Within the Untitled paintings, there is a juxtaposition of two cultures in one composition. You see fertility and God-like totems next to psychedelic patterns of fabric, wallpaper and furniture. What is striking is that they are ‘Tribal’ objects’ set inside a modernist interior.

Holding onto the past and keeping its memory is what is interesting with this painting series. It is as if these worlds have always co-existed  (coloniser, colonised) within these living room compositions. These paintings tell a visual story. They slowly reveal themselves and prompt many questions. What is behind the desire to domesticate the primitive? What are these indigenous artefacts, which disturb modern design doing in suburban homes around the country?

Graham Fletcher, Untitled, 2010
from Lounge Room Tribalism
oil on canvas, courtesy of Melanie Roger Gallery

The objects demand attention and command a physical presence, may it be just curiosity or a sense of bringing the spiritual back to the suburbs. They are taken out of their original use and context and placed in a new ‘home’. There, they become inactive and join the vases, picture frames and coffee table books. Now these objects of culture and tradition are transformed into exotic household interior design. Detached of cultural significance, they have lost their function and are fetishized.

For a more comprehensive look into the ideas behind Graham Fletcher's paintings, I recommend the publication produced by Mangere Arts Centre. It is a well-executed catalogue in design and writing content, well worth a read.

Read Shahriar's previous posts on Home AKL here.

Reclaiming Representation

Gallery guide Shahriar Asdollah-Zadeh returns to the blog with a look into the artworks of Angela Tiatia in Home AKL.

Pacific artists working in Auckland are in search of art that can represent their identities and new national consciousness. Home AKL at Auckland Art Gallery is asking critical questions related to this: What is contemporary Pacific art? How should it be critiqued? How does Diaspora affect art making? Why is there a need to reclaim representation?

Pre-conceptions about what Pacific art ‘should’ look like are being broken down. These pre-conceptions result from positioning artists of Pacific heritage as ‘others’. The use of new media and imagery that does not rely on clichéd visual representations of Pacific people has helped to break down pre-conceptions, and Pacific artists seek to ‘reclaim their representation’ in order to counter those imposed on them. The movement to reclaim representation attracts a new audience. The audience can relate to the works on a personal level and it can engage with the audience’s lived realities.

Angela Tiatia is a Samoan artist living in Auckland and Sydney. She has two artworks in Home AKL, both of which work to reclaim representation through acts of subtle protest. Her research-based art practice, which incorporates the video, internet and found objects, makes an important contribution to the exhibition. Material Culture, 2012 collects photographs and objects from online auction websites such as eBay. These were located over a year by typing in keyword search phrases like ‘sexy hula girl’ and ‘hunky Polynesian man’.

Angela Tiatia, Material Culture (detail), 2012
found photographs and objects, commissioned by Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 2012

What is presented within the two glass vitrines is a collection of historical photographs. They range back over 100 years, maybe longer. Most photos collected are homogenised depictions of Pacific life from a tourist’s point of view or created for a tourist market. A majority of them are snapshots of tourist interactions with ‘locals’. Material Culture critically views cultural signifiers, underpinned by the idea of otherness, which are used to create the representations of Pacific people.

Angela Tiatia, Material Culture (detail), 2012
found photographs and objects, commissioned by Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 2012

Tiatia’s video performance, Hibiscus Rosa Sinensis also looks at issues of representation. The hibiscus flower, a Pacific icon, is a focus of the performance. The flower along with the combination of Tiatia’s partially clad body serves as an ultimate point of reference similar to the phrase ‘Hula girl’.

Angela Tiatia, video still from Hibiscus Rosa-Sinensis, 2010
courtesy of the artist

Tiatia slowly eats the hibiscus, literally consuming the stereotype. Her eyes, looking directly at the camera, challenge the audience to question the legacies of colonialism placed upon Pacific women. The work is humorous and subtle, unusual and effective. Definitely, the audience ends up watching this video more than once.

Read Shahriar's previous posts on Home AKL here.

Migration, Diaspora and Trans-experience: Part II

Last week, I blogged about how the concept of the homeland is not a memory of a fixed place in time. Rather it is discourse that engages the past, present and future all at once.

Trans-experience is a development of the term diaspora. It emphasizes an identity in flux constantly changing and responding to influences both past and present simultaneously. This term, trans-experience, describes an evolving identity that can change any time due to the memory of the homeland while being in the new environment.¹

Rejecting any fixed representations, the artists within Home AKL propose hybrid identities. They negotiate an art practice where past, present and future memories of the homeland simultaneously influence the new ‘Home’ they live in, Auckland. This is evident in Siliga David Setoga’s Blackboard Work and Greg Semu's self portraits with his pe’a tattoo.

Siliga David Setoga, Blackboard Work, 2010-2012
blackboard, chalk, courtesy of the artist

Setoga’s work is universal in commentary and applicable to any minority group migrating to New Zealand and the struggles they face assimilating as young students to the New Zealand ‘norm’. The first Blackboard Work addresses the issue of replacing a child’s birth name, from Samoan culture with a first name to assimilate into a primary school classroom. Setoga is displaying a hybrid cultural memory of his childhood, where tradition just as important as assimilation.

Greg Semu, Self-portrait with side of pe'a, Sentinel Road, Herne Bay, 2012, digital print, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, purchased 2012

In contrast, Greg Semu celebrates his ritualistic roots of pe’a through documentary photography. Semu fully reveals all and documents publicly his tattoos for the world to see. Semu is asking; what are the politics of identity? Do my tattoos define who I am? Alternatively, is it a critical interpretation of the self and the ‘other?’


- Shahriar Asdollah-zadeh

1. Chiu, Melissa, “Breakout Chinese art, outside China.” Milano, Italy: Edizioni Charta, 2006.

Migration, Diaspora and Trans-experience: Part I

We asked our Gallery guides to respond to the artworks in our current exhibition Home AKL. Our first poster, Shahriar Asdollah-Zadeh, is of Iranian/Filipino descent, born in the Philippines and raised in New Zealand. He completed a BFA in 2009 at Elam School of Fine Art, an PGDIP in fine art with distinction at Elam in 2010 and has been a practising artist since. Asdollah-Zadeh's art practice and academic research has mainly focused around diaspora and trans-experience of local and global displaced communities in the Middle East and the West. His website is www.therevolutioncontinued.org

Diaspora plays a major role in the history of Pacific contemporary art. Theories of the phrase can be both regional and global in definition. Historically, the term has been used to describe what has happened to the Jewish race for over two millennia. Diaspora is a dislocation and a sense of longing for one’s homeland. The notion can be temporary or permanent and addresses cultural displacement because of migration.  Modern usage of the term diaspora within contemporary art raises questions about the politics of identity, context, place, exile, hybrid cultural memory, and a critical interpretation of the self and other.

This departure from history’s position of diaspora referring only to the past is necessary – the pacific has changed due to globalisation and migration over the last half century so the definition needs to evolve. Melissa Chiu, a director of contemporary art and author of Breakout Chinese Art; Outside China, writes about the term Trans-experience. Trans-experience is a development of the term diaspora.

There is common ground these Pacific artists from Home AKL draw inspiration from – it is a memory of the homeland be it one that affects their past, present or future. The Pacific homeland itself is an evolving influence for these artists rather than a fixed moment when migration occurred.

Trans-experience is strongly evident in the art practice and paintings of John Pule. He was born in Niue, at the age four he moved to New Zealand and only returned to his homeland as a young adult. His paintings create a conversation of how one’s cultural roots, religious communities and childhood upbringing is continuing to influence him now and possibly in his  future, as it did in his migration to New Zealand when he was young. Moreover, it may have been the reason which drew him back to his homeland many decades later. The composition of his painting Motu Keheaga shows many different varying images and subject matters. What ties it all together is how it is all one story of his life. His paintings can be read as a self-reflection, a chronicle of the journey of finding himself and his roots.

John Pule, Motu Keheaga, 1998
oil on unstretched cotton, courtesy of the artist