Peter McLeavey

It is with sadness that we learnt today of the passing of Peter McLeavey, a great friend to New Zealand’s artists and a wonderful advocate for art.

Staff of Auckland Art Gallery have long had an enduring association with Peter and his much admired Wellington gallery on the first floor of 147 Cuba Street. Our thoughts go to his family and friends and we send them our sincere condolences.

Over the next week the E.H.McCormick Research Library (open Monday to Saturday 1 to 5pm) will have available Luit Bieringa’s documentary portrait The Man in the Hat and Jill Trevelyan’s prize-winning biography Peter McLeavey: the Life and Times of a New Zealand Art Dealer. Both film and book portray many of the qualities which made Peter a unique presence in New Zealand’s art scene for five decades.

Through the agency of NZ On Screen you can watch Luit Bieringa’s film online:
http://www.nzonscreen.com/title/the-man-in-the-hat-2009

Peter mentioned to me on a number of occasions that the Auckland Art Gallery had been one of his gallery’s key clients. Nearly 100 artworks have entered this Gallery’s collection through Peter’s insight.

Our most recent purchase from Peter was in 2013 of Ava Seymour’s unforgettable Health, Happiness and Housing photo collages. In 1989 he enabled two of Charles Tole’s most important early paintings to enter Auckland's public art collection. In 2007 he ensured that this Gallery could acquire W.D. Hammond’s painting Giant Eagle.  There are many other instances of Peter working strategically to assist the growth of public art collections.

Every art acquisition made from Peter’s gallery could have a story related by him attached to it. Peter had a joint focus – to profile New Zealand's artists and to foster art collections. He worked closely with his clients and could instantly recall their purchases in detail. Peter's complete dedication to local artists was a trait that many people have commented upon and admired.

Numerous New Zealand artists have been mentored and nurtured by the expertise and long-term support of Peter McLeavey. His entire life was one of committed advocacy for our painters, sculptors, photographers and printmakers.

Image credit:
Marti Friedlander
Peter McLeavey 1981

gelatin silver print

Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, gift of Marti Friedlander, 

with assistance from the Elise Mourant Bequest, 2001

Gough Whitlam’s cultural legacy – a game-changer for the public imagination

The ‘towering patrician’ and former Prime Minister of Australia, the Honourable Edward Gough Whitlam AC QC (born 1916) passed away on Tuesday 21 October 2014 at the impressive age of 98. Much has been written and more will be said about this remarkable politician and key figure in Australian politics, both about his achievements and his miscalculations. I would like to make reference here to his formative contribution to culture.

In power for three potent years from 1972 before his dramatic dismissal on 11 November 1975, Whitlam altered the cultural and social climate and helped reshape public imagination. He increased Australia’s ties with Asia, recognised the People’s Republic of China, introduced the health system which later became Medicare, replaced ‘God Save the Queen’ with ‘Advance Australia Fair’ as the national anthem, established the Australian National Parks and Wildlife Service, ended conscription, introduced free university tuition and expanded justice for Indigenous Australians by granting land rights. He led a new focus on women, the environment and the arts.

On the cultural front Whitlam elevated the Australia Council for the Arts to the level of a separate statutory authority with increased powers, he established the National Film and Television School in Sydney and the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. In 1973 Whitlam purchased for the National Gallery, Blue poles, painted in 1952 by Jackson Pollock, at a cost of $1.3 million, the highest price ever paid for a modern painting at the time. The acquisition radically divided public opinion; Whitlam knew its significance and toured the painting across Australia. I remember my excitement seeing the work and its impact on the population, and being rather amused that in the face of outrage, Whitlam used an image of Blue poles as the official government Christmas card. Gough Whitlam and his wife Margaret (who passed away in 2012) will be long remembered for their brilliant minds, enormous vitality and fearless vision.

– Rhana Devenport, Director, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki


Further reading:

• For obituaries visit Australia Council for the Arts and the Guardian
• For more on Blue poles see the National Gallery of Australia
• For a summary of the so called ‘Whitlam Years’:
• For a snapshot of the zeitgeist that saw his election as Prime Minister 1972, check out this rather hip TV campaign, ‘It’s time’:

Image credit: Gough Whitlam at Old masters – new visions : the Phillips Collection, Australian National Gallery 1987 Photograph: Whitlam Institute. Ref: Guardian Australia

Jonathan Ngarimu Mane-Wheoki (1943–2014)

It is with tremendous sorrow that Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki acknowledges the passing of Professor Jonathan Ngarimu Mane-Wheoki (Ngāpuhi/Te Aupouri/Ngāti Kuri), who died peacefully on the evening of 10 October 2014.

Jonathan will always remain a deeply respected and greatly loved curator, academic and historian in the fields of art, architecture and culture. Since 2010 he has been a pivotal member of Haerewa, Auckland Art Gallery’s Māori Advisory Group, offering invaluable advice and generously sharing his extraordinary knowledge.

Along with his exceptional ability to work effectively and elegantly across the spheres of art, academia and museums, Jonathan has been remarkable in offering both a Māori worldview and a European perspective. His specialist fields deftly spanned art and architecture from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. He has been a highly influential pioneer in the development of contemporary Māori and Pacific art and art history within university and curatorial contexts. In essence, his nuanced understanding defied the categories of academic disciplines and spanned centuries. Jonathan’s contribution is enduring and profound.

Highly respected at home in Aotearoa New Zealand and internationally, Jonathan will long be remembered for his brilliant oration and his powerful intellectual support of and advocacy for contemporary Māori art practice, alongside his passionate Māori voice in the fields of art history, architecture, fine arts education, cultural exchange and critical writing.

Although his health was failing, 2014 proved to be an extraordinarily fertile year for Jonathan in his tireless and determined pursuit to advance the place of Māori and Pacific art. In March he travelled to the United Kingdom to speak at an international conference on Pacific art in Cambridge and to contribute to the advisory group for a major forthcoming exhibition, Oceania, at the Royal Academy in London. He also participated in an important colloquium with the Centre Pompidou in Paris which examined the legacy of the formative 1989 exhibition, Les Magiciens de la Terre. These projects reflect the level of esteem in which he was long been held within the international cultural community.

Earlier in 2014, Jonathan contributed a pivotal and spirited essay to the catalogue for Five Māori Painters, an exhibition organised by Auckland Art Gallery. Also this year, Jonathan was deservedly made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to the arts. Recently, in September, he was awarded a medal as Companion of the Auckland War Memorial Museum, the citation of which reads: 

‘…Jonathan has contributed significantly to academic and museum circles and has held senior positions that situate him at the forefront in ongoing dialogue about New Zealand’s history and expression in the arts. Through his work at the University of Canterbury from 1975 to 2004, as Senior Lecturer and Dean of Music and Fine Arts, Jonathan has had a major influence on a whole generation of our scholars and curators who themselves are now leaders in the field. His depth of knowledge and his willingness to foster debate and research continue to be an inspiration across our sector.’

Jonathan has published extensively; developed exhibitions, presented lectures and seminars on art, museums and cultural heritage both nationally and internationally. His expertise is widely sought and he has served on numerous advisory and governance bodies throughout his career. In recent years he has divided his time between academia and the museum profession in leadership roles at the University of Auckland and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.’

Jonathan will be greatly missed by a wide community of friends, colleagues, artists and students, all of whom benefited from his remarkable insight, generosity, encouragement, faith, passion and intellectual acumen.

Our thoughts and aroha are with his partner of 35 years, Paul Bushnell, and his sister Moea

Kei konā te aroha me te whakaaro

Hei maumaharatanga ki te tino hoa

– Rhana Devenport, Director, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki

Glenn Jowitt (1955–2014)

Yesterday I attended Glenn Jowitt’s funeral at the Grey Lynn Presbyterian Church on the corner of Crummer and Great North Road. The service was led with warmth, humour and reverence by the Reverend Nathan Pedro and the Reverend Mua Strickson-Pua. This well-known Church is a much cherished gathering place for Auckland’s Samoan, Tokelau and Tuvalu community. It is also one of this city’s loveliest Church centres and is sited just around the corner from Prime Road where Glenn lived for many years. 

Glenn’s mother, sister and brother were present. His niece also. They all spoke with much love and tenderness to the hundreds of friends present. It was the largest funeral gathering of any Auckland artist since the service for Don Binney at Saint Mary’s in Parnell. 

For all gathered there was a truly palpable presence of loss. Many tears were shed, many words were spoken. There were laughs and there were surprises at hearing delighting anecdotes. Glenn’s character emerged through a panoply of wonderful speeches. 

Allen, Glenn’s brother, asked me to address the gathering on behalf of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki and I felt the weight of every staff member at every New Zealand Gallery and Museum on my shoulders. I had to speak in a way that expressed how united respect for this most sensitive and forward-thinking artist. In my speech, I focussed on Glenn as an artist. What follows is a sense of what I said, although I spoke to everyone much in the second person tense so that I spoke directly to Glenn…

Glenn Jowitt was a distinguished and important camera artist. Auckland’s loss is our country’s loss and his passing is the Pacific’s loss. When I learnt of Glenn Jowitt’s passing I entered a veil of memory, recalling this wonderful man, this brilliant artist and most loyal friend.

During the last decade Glenn and I spoke frequently about his on-going grapple with issues of his health. We would sometimes speak for an hour discussing what he was experiencing from and through his heart. We joked that it was Glenn’s blood machine, his heart was a living machine and his heart was a trusty yet unpredictable functionary that often held Glenn in its thrall.

Glenn would laugh about this fact but he also got angry especially when he was in a meditative mood. He knew the dilemma that his heart delivered to his life and he expected its uncertainty with wry chagrin, he experienced its demands with patient humour, with sudden annoyance and sometimes with raw disdain. It was as if he would not, he could not; deliver his future plans to any vicissitudes of chanced health. He would overcome. He had to. His many photography and publishing projects demanded it. Glenn wanted to determine an on-going life for his images and he made his projects occur simply by willing them into existence.

Glenn’s list of publications is a lengthy list and it is impressive. Read a short list that I have compiled.

Simply said, and the truth is this: no other contemporary photographer in the world created a comparable body of photography which is in competition with what Glenn discovered and recorded . He was never told that he must work on this or that subject and he ensured that all his creative choices came from his own volition.

Glenn felt a terrific need to keep on, to achieve, to overcome what he thought of as a frailty entirely outside of his body’s determination. Consequently, the word determination is his marker because determination is a key feature of this brave artist’s character.

In the 35 years that Glenn and I were friends I always knew that he was an artist who made plans and these plans were to record, to picture, to document life as he saw it. There is a bohemian spirit within Glenn’s art and it is a spirit that allowed him to be at places few other camera artists would work at.

Be it the back stalls of a rural racetrack.

Be it the homes of gang members.

Be it at a church on a Pacific atoll only accessible by sea.

Be it at a huge international arts festival somewhere in the Moana.

I have always been impressed by the fact that Glenn never, ever, pulled back from the ambitious nature of his photo-projects even though they frequently presented him with substantial problems.

Problems of funding, problems of diplomacy, problems of accessibility, problems of timing and schedules, problems of publication. He surmounted all these issues because he wanted his artwork to be a vehicle of advocacy for the many people that he collaborated with. Especially peoples of the Pacific.

I first met Glenn in the 1970s, very soon after Outreach (later Art Station, now Studio One Toi Tū) opened as a public access art studio in Ponsonby Road. I attended one of the early inner city exhibitions of contemporary Pacific craft to be held in any Auckland public gallery. Naturally, it was a huge community event and some of those present had never encountered a photographer who was so determined to document their opening event. They showed Glenn what we call ‘kawa’, the protocol of necessary behaviour.

Glenn was very well-known throughout the Pacific for his ability and reputation as a photographer, yet Glenn remained humble as a person. As the years went on, Glenn became more humble. And it was at the beginning of his career when he first arrived in Auckland that he was shown humility, he was tutored in humility and this was a true lesson that he never forgot. The elders spoke to Glenn and he listened and understood their message.

I interviewed Glenn at length some months before his death. We spoke about his photographic practice and he reiterated how all of his artwork came from his own volition. Glenn had the insight to know that we live in a Pacific place and that Pacific peoples are emblems marking the massive change that is happening in our society. We are becoming here each day, in every way, more Pacific as a people together.

Glenn understood that the history of the Pacific has much to teach us all. In focussing on the peoples of the Pacific, he travelled extensively throughout the Pacific. Arguably more than any other photographer of his generation. He shared his images generously, always.

Glenn cherished the astonishingly important traditions of the Pacific – be they expressed in heritage, traditional and customary ways as well as in contemporary and urban ways. The energy and the talent of Pacific peoples became one of the beacons which Glenn Jowitt’s art sought to affirm, acknowledge and celebrate. Glenn was trusted. He undertook his legwork properly and with politeness and correctness.

I have always thought that Glenn was one of New Zealand’s most assiduous camera artists; he was determined, patient and tenacious. In a career which spanned more than 35 years, he established an international reputation as a documentary photographer.

I spoke to the much loved kaumatua Don Soloman yesterday and Don kindly confirmed what I recalled. It was Don that gave Glenn Jowitt his very first exhibition at Auckland when he moved from Christchurch. Don recalled that no Auckland dealer gallery would consider showing Glenn’s photography then. This is over 35 years ago. So, Don kindly offered Glenn the recently opened Gallery space at Outreach. The opening was a wonderful party and I think it was from that very moment that Glenn became an Auckland and took this city’s multicultural reality to his heart.

There is no irony that Glenn’s Auckland reputation was born in a community gallery as Glenn was always an artist who took the aspirations of all the many communities that he had the privilege and the pleasure of working with to the core of his creativity. It is this love of people that singles Glenn Jowitt out. He shared his talent and he gave of himself freely. Glenn’s art, his photographs, is his life’s gift to us. 

Image credits:

Glenn Jowitt (1955–2014)
Ashburton 9 September 1978 1982
black and white photograph
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki
purchased 1983

Glenn Jowitt (1955-2014)
Baldie (Shane Piripi Turner) 1979
black and white photograph
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki
 purchased 1985

Vale Gordon Bennett (1955–2014)

Gordon Bennett Home decor (Algebra) Daddy's little girl 1998

Australian artist Gordon Bennett broke new ground with his distinctive images which commented on local and global issues and questions of contemporary existence. Art offered a means of communication for Bennett that was not possible through other channels. He sought out art, undertaking a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art in his hometown of Brisbane at Queensland College of Art. He developed a language in painting and printmaking to interrogate the colonial history of Australia, which was significant in Bennett’s own life. A prolific outpouring of images during the late 1980s and 1990s tapped into postcolonialism and poststructural rethinking of established histories and discourses.

Both commercial and institutional representation were important for the public awareness of Bennett’s practice. Thanks to his gallerists, Bennett’s work had regular presentations in Brisbane and Melbourne, as well as Sydney and Adelaide. His paintings, works on paper and videos were the subject of solo exhibitions in Australia, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Bennett’s works appeared in major exhibitions including dOCUMENTA 13, Germany (2012); the 9th and 12th Biennale of Sydney (1992 and 2000); The Third Asia Pacific Triennal, Brisbane (1999), and a long list of other significant exhibitions.

Bennett’s art was significant for its stand on big issues, as well as its ability to get highlight elements of everyday existence. His reflections on the myths perpetuated in Australian history, such as terra nullius, and attitudes towards Australian Aboriginal people, raised audience awareness of identity politics and the need to re-examine colonial and modern narratives. Bennett’s images of lost explorers seeking the apocryphal inland sea, references to the perspectival tools and mapping of European Enlightenment and the negation of Indigenous presence remain imprinted on viewers. Bennett’s practice was important for artists as well as audiences, setting a significant example of an artist unafraid to engage with the contemporary issues of race, sovereignty and citizenship for emerging Australian Indigenous artists.

Gordon Bennett Notes to Basquiat: Double vision 2000

Bennett remained attuned to the ideological effects of language, images, media and other forces on contemporary life. In recent years, works such as the Camouflage images or the seminal Notes to Basquiat paintings engaged with newer currents in our existence – fear and terror as they were amplified after 9/11 and the Second Gulf War. In these, like his abstract grid paintings of the last decade, Bennett invited viewers to identify undercurrents of meaning and create broader associations.

Bennett’s art was contemporary in more than just its subject matter. In larger series of paintings he worked in a cut-and-paste mode, drawing on other artists’ imagery, and also recycling motifs across time and works. This strategy of appropriation and self re-deployment could be interpreted as a reversal of appropriation – an act on behalf of a people whose history includes the loss of land and the ‘Stolen Generation’. References to the paintings of Piet Mondrian and de Stijl artists in Bennett’s Home Decor works, in which images from Australian modernist artist Margaret Preston’s designs also figured, operated in this way. Aspects of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s imagery regularly reappeared, in homage and sympathy, in this case.

In recent years Bennett also painted under the name John Citizen, a nom de plume that suggests the everyman. Citizen was the artist of the Interior paintings, images abstracted from photographs published in lifestyle magazines. Strangely coloured (often painted with leftover studio paints), these urban interiors evoke the banality of material culture resulting from regarding one’s consumer status as a contemporary social aspiration.

Art and ideas are poorer with the loss of Gordon Bennett on 3 June 2014. His practice stimulated thinking across many areas of the humanities and broke new ground in art engaging with contemporary issues in the West. Bennett’s practice will continue to provide a productive challenge to audiences and evidence the social value an artist can bring by mining untold narratives and visualising under-represented histories.

– Zara Stanhope, Principal Curator, Head of Programmes

Image credits: 

Gordon Bennett
Home decor (Algebra)
Daddy’s little girl 1998
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
182.5 x 182.5 cm
Private Collection, Melbourne

Gordon Bennett
Notes to Basquiat: Double vision 2000
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas
152.3 x 182.7 cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased through the NGV Foundation with the assistance of Henry Gillespie, Governor, 2000.

Images courtesy of Sutton Gallery, Melbourne

Remembering Alexis Hunter

Yesterday, I read letters Alexis Hunter wrote from London during the 1970s to a friend in Auckland. They were vibrant, opinionated, perceptive, engaged writings. They made me recall how strategically she always used titles for her series: Violence: Destruction of Evidence; Dialogue with a Rapist; Identity Crisis; Approach to Fear; Voyeurism; Effeminacy; Sexual Warfare; Masculinisation of Society; Oh No!.

It is unsurprising that Alexis stated ‘it was too hard to be a feminist artist on your own; the criticism was too great to bear’. In 1972 she joined Artists Union Women's Workshop in London and the group was a terrific support to her as an artist. For her, art was political and conceptual. Alexis realised early that a viewer’s perception was essential in a feminist perspective.

I knew Alexis briefly and her engagement with both cameras and xerography fascinated me. She saw lens-based reproduction as a potent tool and an imaginative basis for drawn and painterly adaptation.

During 2006, with the assistance of the Norwich Gallery she presented her ambitious exhibition Alexis Hunter – Radical Feminism in the 1970s. The artist’s book, which accompanied the project, included memorable texts by Lucy R Lippard and John Roberts. Lucy, a keen art commentator, recalled how Alexis saw the tensions between ‘romantic love and sexual hatred’.

Alexis passed away some weeks ago and her death caused me to recall her approach to art making and remember her insight and rigour. In the 1970s she would have described herself as a radical feminist artist so it is not a revelation to say that her stance was often misunderstood back home in New Zealand.

What brought Alexis to mind is her six-part painting The Object Series of 1974–1975, which she gifted to Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki in 1990. I have shown this huge painting, which measures just over seven and a half metres, twice. Firstly in the summer of 2003–04 and then again during 2008. On the second occasion it was one of the first artworks visitors experienced when they entered the Gallery, and I often observed people lingering and looking at it carefully.

By 2003, these panels were already a generation old, dating as they do from soon after Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider and a decade later than Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising and Kustom Kar Kommandos. Like these films, The Object Series has a fond regard for the look of biker culture. To my eye, Alexis’ biker guy is more a male figure performing ‘biker boy lookalike’ than images of a wannabe biker than an authentic biker. He has more superficial style than seeming authenticity. This inherent campness of a feminist trope is what gives this mural its enduring frisson of male fetishism. In a century’s time the figure will have become almost a de trop retro-symbol of bikerness.

Looking back I find that in 2003 I made notes on this six-part mural: The Object Series is an essential sequence in the feminist history of New Zealand art. The artist stares at a young man and objectifies him with her eroticising gaze. His staunchly masculinist posture, grubby clothing and street-wise physicality render his male sexuality as the territory of working men, muscular labourers and bike-boys.

Hunter’s male scene mirrors the hip strategies of early 1970s magazine advertising. This man is a close-up site of visual pleasure for a female’s gaze. Bits of this man are focused upon and sight-lined – forearm, groin, shoulder, hand and feet. By investigating what it means to gawk at a stereotypical bloke, Alexis Hunter represents a grisaille panorama of fetishised masculinity. The painting is an uncompromising exposé of a woman staring at a man with a commitment to feel that her eyes are entirely set upon him.

In 2008, I prepared some further notes: This early work by Alexis Hunter complements her photo-narrative sequences. It is an example of feminist rejection of the power of the male gaze to objectify women in art, in advertising and in life. By painting what she described as ‘passive, seductive men’ Hunter turns viewers into the viewed and demonstrates a disconcerting loss of male identity.

In 2014, I wonder if I see the deliberate objectification of the painting more clearly. They are six paintings searching for masculinity’s presence. They see this male as being ‘other’, of being different, of being an alien gender reminding us who is doing the looking when we are looking. This mirroring of Alexis’ gaze as a commodification of maleness is more humorous than it appeared four decades ago. It echoes just how denim and leather jeans are marketed now, it reflects sexuality as a marketing tool reinforcing that we try to become what we desire by inhabiting a surrogacy of wish fulfillment. Lucy Lippard put it succinctly when she noted, ‘Fetishism and a hint of S&M lurk just beneath the surfaces of Hunter's photographs…’

I reckon Alexis would like the fact that The Object Series retains its skill at provocation. She once said to me that we would one day see how good her six-part painting was but added, in a knowing way, she was glad it was all there in black and white.

Alexis Hunter (1948–2014) New Zealand/United Kingdom

Image credit:
Alexis Hunter
The Object Series 1974–1975
oil on canvas
1015 x 7600 mm overall, in six parts
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki
gift of the artist, 1990

Ian Scott (1945–2013)

The news of Ian Scott’s passing came as a shock as I was unaware that he had been unwell for some years. I am grateful to have spoken with Ian about an acquisition that I made last year. I had long known that the Australasian impresario Harry M Miller had acquired Ian’s most ambitious portrait when it was first exhibited in 1969. The painting has not been seen publicly since then. Don Binney at Te Henga, 1969 is the sort of portrait that once seen is not forgotten.

In 2012, because of his book on New Zealand portraits, I asked Richard Wolfe for notes on his response to Ian Scott’s painting:

‘In 1968 Gordon H. Brown… observed that the painted portrait had fallen into “general disrepute”. The pursuit of a likeness was no longer considered desirable, and had been superseded by photography. But a local revival of portraiture was already underway, stimulated by the previous year’s Face to Face exhibition at Auckland’s New Vision Gallery.

Among the artworks shown was Colin McCahon’s uncompromising Portrait of Gordon H. Brown, which hinted at new possibilities for the genre. Perhaps for the very reason that it was unfashionable, portraiture was now taken up by a new generation of young artists, some of whom were taught by McCahon at the Elam School of Fine Arts. 

In the late 1960s Ian Scott began painting a series of portraits of fellow artists, including Colin McCahon, Wellington art dealer Peter McLeavey and, in 1969, Don Binney. As well as being graduates of Elam, Scott and Binney were both represented in Auckland by the Barry Lett Gallery, and shared an interest in the west coast. Scott painted Binney at Te Henga, against the same rugged coastline seen in the latter’s Sun shall not burn Thee by day nor moon by night (1966) in the collection of the Auckland Art Gallery. Binney is placed to one side of the vista, inviting the viewer into a landscape he made his own, and which includes his studio in the middle distance. 

Don Binney at Te Henga is an affectionate homage to a fellow practitioner. Scott has deferred to elements of his subject’s distinctive style, although the swarm of cotton-wool clouds is decidedly unBinney-like. This portrait is a unique record, providing both an introduction and context for the work of one of New Zealand’s best-known and most recognisable artists. It is also the work of another major artist who, along with such contemporaries as Robin White and Michael Smither, was responsible for the revival of interest in the painted portrait in New Zealand.’ 

Ian Scott grew up in Henderson and spent many weekends during his youth biking to Te Henga/Bethells Beach. He explored the beach, islands and hinterland. Scott was impressed that Don Binney, who was five years older, also spent time at Te Henga while attending art school. Interestingly, Ian had been painting Te Henga since 1960, some years before Don began working there.

Ian was 24 years old when he painted Don at Te Henga. It was his most ambitious portrait to date in its scale and intention. Earlier, he had made portraits of Colin McCahon, Peter McLeavey, Gordon Walters and Milan Mrkusich. These were all based on photographs not taken by the painter.

Don Binney at Te Henga was purposely intended to be New Zealand’s largest portrait; it is twice life-size. Scott was inspired by the scale of the portrait heads in the recent paintings of American Pop artists James Rosenquist, Tom Wesselman, Roy Lichtenstein and Alex Katz.

More than other local artists, Scott was looking to the relevance of American Pop art here while tying it to his response to Rita Angus’s realism. He is attempting to update the approach that Angus took in her Portrait of Betty Curnow of 27 years earlier where the interests of both the subject and the artist are combined into one image. By the time Scott painted this work, Binney had been associated with paintings of Te Henga since 1963.

In 1968, there was a flurry in Auckland when the New Vision Gallery showed Face to Face, the first attempt in New Zealand to focus on contemporary portraiture. For a time it was believed that portraiture could become a revitalised genre with Geoff Thornley, Ross Ritchie, Colin McCahon, Peter Siddell, Richard Killeen and Ian Scott making portraits. Killeen and Scott looked to the much-derided suburbia and the bush covered hills that McCahon was then obsessed with. Instead of a landscape that is without sound, devoid of people and containing no evidence of history – Scott envisaged a coastal place that has a champion, and which is populated and has been lived in for some time.

By appropriating photographs and analyzing the way that Binney himself drew Te Henga, Scott used the current Pop methodology of conjoining image source and artistic styles seen in the work of James Rosenquist. Wilderness and habitation become connected. Portrait and location are contrasted in a disquieting way. At the time when this painting was painted, Scott’s cohorts at Elam – students and teachers – were confused. Were they looking at a portrait in a landscape or a landscape with a portrait?

Gordon H Brown wrote: 'Perhaps the most significant development has been the growing interest in a new kind of realism that owes no allegiance to any recent art movement but if anything is closer to the regionalists of nineteen-thirties without necessarily being so naturalistic or regional in outlook. In this respect Don Binney acts as a link rather than a manifestation of this new approach.' (From Directions in Recent New Zealand Painting: Two Views in Ten Years of New Zealand Painting in New Zealand, Auckland City Art Gallery, 1968)

Hamish Keith concurred with Gordon’s opinion and stated in the same publication: ‘There has recently been a revival of interest in an uncompromisingly realist approach to imagery. Rita Angus could perhaps be seen as a precursor to this, but it has been developed and extended since 1962 by Don Binney initially and later Michael Smither and other painters.’ 

Don Binney’s studio at Te Henga was the red barn at lower right. The colonial villa belonged to the Bethell family. The portrait was first exhibited at the Barry Lett Galleries in mid-1969, at which occasion Don Binney had a portrait of himself taken against it. Harry Miller immediately acquired the painting from the exhibition for $200.00 (the same price that the Auckland Art Gallery paid for Rita Angus’s Fog Hawkes Bay that was on display at Barry Lett Galleries at the same time).

Don Binney at Te Henga is intended to appear as if figure and landscape are both seen under extremely bright light. As if overwhelmed by the light’s intensity. The orbs of white clouds reflect the pulsing sensation that one gets from the backlight frequently encountered on Auckland’s west coast. These dots reinforce the glare expressed by the painting. Don Binney is somewhat brought back from this intensity because he is standing in quarter shadow, as if shaded by a tree. The painting is not meant to be naturalistic; it couples the bright and silvery light frequently experienced on this coastline. The fact that there are almost no shadows in the view reflects the notion that the light is illuminating the entire view at the height of an Auckland summer.

For Ian Scott, the painting shows that ‘New Zealand is a very bright and hard edged place. It affirms that my art and Don’s vision was similar. We are getting at the pearlescent light of New Zealand’. The artist consciously wanted to conflate the influence of Pop art with regional art tradition of New Zealand. Time wise, the portrait comes at the mid-point of his realist phase. Sky Dash, 1969–70 was his next painting (Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki). Ian Scott was fascinated with what was happening overseas in the 1960s, and it was this international perspective that he brings to his portrait of an esteemed regionalist artist and friend.

I was encouraged to see Ian’s enthusiasm when I informed him that his portrait Don Binney at Te Henga had been gifted by the Friends of the Gallery to the collection. He had thought that his most ambitious portrait had been lost to New Zealand.

With a vocation arching over more than four decades, Ian Scott showed it was possible to be a full-time painter. Few other local painters have been as prolific as he was, even fewer as determined to explore such diverse and, sometimes, divisive content. His commitment to his studio practice was immense and filled with focus. Series after series of paintings emerged. There is much more to be known about the art of Ian Scott.

To his partner Nan, and son Chris, the staff of the Gallery send our sincere condolences.

CREDITS:
Ian Scott
Don Binney at Te Henga 1969
oil on hardboard
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki
gift of the Friends of the Auckland Art Gallery, 2012

Ian Scott
Sky Dash 1969–70
oil on canvas Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki
gift of the Artist, 2004

Tribute to Ralph Hotere

A king tide

A king tide has a special energy and occurs after a full moon when the moon is closest to the Earth. One such tide greeted us at Rawene as we assembled as an ope waiting for the ferry to arrive from across the Hokianga Harbour to start the last leg of our journey to Mitimiti, where we would pay our last respects to Ralph Hotere. Like a karanga, this was a call of welcome into Hokianga whakapau karakia territory. Indeed, being in the company of elders, artists, writers and educators gave me a strong feeling of drawing closer to the heart of friendships and aroha tetahi ki tetahi for Ralph, his whanau and for Mitimiti. 

When you get to Mitimiti, the only way out is the way you came in. The remoteness is reflected in the road conditions indicative of a remote community, located on the western side of the lower reaches of the Hokianga. However, the sheer distance does not suggest to you the beauty of the place, its people and their whakapapa. 

The remembrances of a generation are most poignant at a tangihana as memories wash over each mourner. Tangihana provides everyone with a role to uplift people, to recall those already passed on and to inspire the bereaved to let go of a beloved. For an ope like ours it was a chance to pay last respects. On the day, Tumoana, Matihetihe, Hato Hemi, Mitimiti and Hiona had the last say. The Tasman Sea has quieted down and the king tide has ebbed and flowed into Te Moananui a Kiwa. Moe mai, moe mai, haere atu ra.

- Ngahiraka Mason, Indigenous Curator, Māori Art

He poroporoaki ki a Hone Papita Raukura Ralph Hotere - na Haerewa

‘Kotahi kapua ki te rangi, kua marangai ki te whenua.’

He waiata na to hoa Dame Kāterina Te Heikoko Mataira.

E te rangatira Ralph

I hara mai koe ki toku taha, me o rakau e rua,

Tetahi he pene rakau, tetahi he paraehe, ka ki mai koe.

“Ma te pene e tuhi ou whakaaro, ma te paraehe e whaikorero.”

You came to my side with two sticks in your hands a pencil and a brush and said, “the pencil will scribble your thoughts and the brush will make them speak.”

Such sage advice from a master of his craft, to an aspiring art student in 1961, when Ralph was the itinerant art teacher in Northland.

How poignant are those words as we reflect on his legacy of awe-inspiring works that speak volumes in the international galleries, offices and numerous homes of Hotere admirers.

It is with heavy hearts of sadness that we of Haerewa Māori Advisory Group, Toi o Tāmaki Auckland Art Gallery, deeply mourn the passing of our greatest contemporary artist.

Though exceedingly private, Ralph's indelible charm and penchant for witty intelligent conversation, afforded many stimulating discussions among friends, which undoubtedly emanated into conceptual expressions for his works.

Na te tini, me te hohonu o ana kaupapa mahi Toi, kore rawa e mutu nga maumahara mo tenei tohunga o tenei Ao Hou.

Ralph. E tuohu nei matou ki a koe, ki to whanau, me to iwi,

Mamae ana te ngakau, turuturu nga roimata, i to wehenga,

Haere atu, haere hangai ki o tupuna, ki o hoa kei tua o te arai  kohurangi,

Ki te ao wairua, okioki ai.

Takoto mai, takoto mai, takoto mai.

Arohanui

HAEREWA - Mere Lodge, Bernard Makoare, Lisa Reihana, Fred Graham, Jonathan Mane-wheoki, Elizabeth Ellis.

Image: Tukaki wharenui, Te Kaha-nui-a-tiki marae, Te Kaha. Marilyn Webb and Ralph Hotere. Brown Rewiti (right). June 1973. Māori Artists and Writers / Nga Puna Waihanga Series by John Miller, gelatin silver print toned with gold, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, purchased 2001

Ralph Hotere ONZ

It was with much sadness that the staff of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki learnt of the passing of Ralph Hotere in Dunedin. We send our aroha to his wife, Mary, and to his family. Moe mai e te Rangatira.

When we were planning the reopening of Auckland Art Gallery in September 2011, I proposed that Ralph Hotere’s Godwit/Kuaka mural be installed in the long gallery adjacent to the entrance foyer. This 18-metre long artwork was Ralph’s largest painting; Hamish Keith commissioned it from the artist for Auckland Airport’s Arrivals Hall in 1977.

I told Ralph that we were going to reopen the building and show with Godwit/Kuaka, and I asked him to help decide how the work would be presented. He agreed that the space we proposed would be very like the corridor in which it was installed at the airport – its first home. Just before Christmas 2011, Ralph recorded the Muriwhenua chant Ruia ruia, opea opea, tahia tahia. When he called me and played his recording I was overwhelmed; it now plays in the gallery housing Godwit/Kuaka.

I wrote a short essay about the mural at reopening, which we publish here for the first time.

Ralph Hotere's Godwit/Kuaka mural

In 1977 Auckland International Airport commissioned Ralph Hotere to create a mural in response to the theme of long-distance air travel and arrival. In doing so it commissioned one of the largest public paintings ever produced in New Zealand – 18 metres in length. Originally titled The Flight of the Godwit, it was displayed on the rear wall of the airport’s Arrivals Hall to serve as the first welcome to returning citizens and as a greeting to visitors at New Zealand’s major entry point.

The enormous artwork remained in this traveller’s welcoming area until 1996, when the airport undertook a redevelopment of the terminal building. The mural was deaccessioned from the airport’s art collection, and subsequently purchased by the Chartwell Trust and placed at Auckland Art Gallery. At that moment, the artist renamed his mural Godwit/Kuaka.

Godwit/Kuaka weaves together many of the themes which Hotere’s work at the time was exploring: the relationship between the ancient Maōri worldview and the contemporary world; abstract art’s ability to evoke ecology and cosmology; the relationship between place and human experience.

While Hotere’s mural honours and recalls the flights undertaken by the migratory eastern bar-tailed godwit (Limosa Lapponica Baueri) it sets up a metaphor in which the bird’s annual return represents our own travels and homecomings. This legendary shore bird is renowned for undertaking transoceanic journeys. Its stamina is legendary – not only is its journey a long one, but the godwit makes no stops for rest or sustenance along the way. Māori have long admired and celebrated the bar-tailed godwit; they named it the kūaka. The kūaka’s arrival is celebrated in the ancient Te Aupōuri Māori chant which the artist’s father, Tangirau Hotere, taught him at Mitimiti in Northland.

Walking the length of Godwit/Kuaka’s polished, reflective surface viewers meet the darkened central panels on which Hotere has recorded in capital letters lines from the Te Aupōuri chant. It is as if a bird’s flight has come to rest with a song. The dark centre is flanked by vertical bands of colour which pulsate slowly, advancing forwards and retreating backwards upon the shiny lacquer-like surface. This bandwidth of shimmering and piercing hues acts as a melody of arrival and departure.

Godwit/Kuaka’s astonishing presence is not solely driven by its physical scale but by the emotion, the welcome, it creates. Looking like a fragment from a monumental loom in which the carefully drawn stripes are never-ending warps that bind the darkness of night to the colour of day, the mural sings to us and acts as a beacon calling us home, signalling our safe arrival.

Chant and translation

Ruia ruia, opea opea, tahia tahia
Kia hemo ake
Ko te kaka koakoa
Kia herea mai
Te kawai korokī
Kia tatata mai
I roto i tana pukorokoro whaikaro
He kūaka
He kūaka mārangaranga
Kotahi manu
I tau ki te tāhuna
Tau atu
Tau atu
Kua tau mai

Scattering, gathering, forming a single unit
Death/exhaustion rises up
It is the rope, koakoa [the cry of the bird]
Binding you here to me
The cry/chattering of the flock
Come close together
From inside its throat – a marauding party
A godwit
A godwit that hovers
One bird
Has settled on the sand bank
It has settled over there
It has settled over there
They have settled here

Image: Ralph Hotere (1931-2013)
Te Aupōuri
Godwit/Kuaka (detail) 1977
lacquer on hardboard
Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki
gift of Auckland International Airport Ltd 1997


I appreciate the support of the Chartwell Trust, Ron Sang, and the family of the late Te Whanaupani Thompson (Nga Puhi, Ngati Wai) for permission to reprint his translation of the Muriwhenua chant Ruia ruia, opea opea, tahia tahia into English.

The Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki gratefully acknowledges the close assistance provided by Ralph Hotere, Mary McFarlane and Judith Ablett-Kerr, Chair, Ralph Hotere Foundation Trust in the preparation of this text about Godwit/Kuaka.

Don Binney (1940-2012)

Don Binney, Kotare Over Ratana Church, Te Kao, 1963
oil on board, courtesy of a private collection, New Zealand

After Milly Paris spoke yesterday at Art + Object about her life-long committment to New Zealand's artists, she invited everyone present to stand and remember the life of Don Binney. It was a quellingly silent and sad moment, everyone understood that Don has created so many paintings that cherish life.

Don would have understood Milly's spontaneous gesture of affection for him as an artist. It signalled what Auckland and Aotearoa New Zealand shares in the losing of an exceptional citizen. Certainly, we are now mourning one of our most humane and concerned artists.

Marti Friedlander, Don Binney 1965
gelatin silver print, toned with gold, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, gift of Marti Friedlander, with assistance from the Elise Mourant Bequest, 2001

Milly, and her late husband Les, were 'early adopters' of Don's remarkable art. He spoke about this in 1989 while looking back to that crucial period between 1965 and 1975 when his exhibitions would sell to people who concurred with the innovative ecology expressed by his artwork. His vision for New Zealand's fauna and flora was shared by a supportive coterie, they believed in what he was showing us. He noted that 'one's creativity was reinforced by an inquiring, literate and relatively homogeneous art scene. As often as not, a painting would be bought by another teacher, artist or writer as a gesture of support...'

Witness the outpouring of feeling that occurred when Dick Scott gifted Don's painting Kotare over Ratana Church, Te Kao to Christchurch's earthquake appeal in order to raise much needed funds. This was a gesture of support that Don himself applauded. That wonderful painting  has been famous from the moment it was first exhibited. Dick had first seen it at Auckland's Ikon Gallery, acquiring it in October 1964. It was then shown in the important exhibition Contemporary New Zealand Painting at London's Commonwealth Institute and then, on its return, in Ten Years of New Zealand Painting in Auckland (1967) at this Gallery. This was the moment when Don became a renowned contemporary New Zealand artist. He was one of the first living artists to become well-known.

Don Binney, Tui over kauri, Te Henga, 1966
oil and acrylic on board, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, gift of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Wellington, 2003

Don Binney thought a lot about what his art meant to others. He took his vocation as a painter seriously and he spoke about it with a voice replete with erudition and hard-won experience. His vocabulary in one-to-one conversation was no less impressive than when he was speaking to any spell-bound group. He savoured words like accents of local colour and never cared if his choice of words was considered arcane. Don laughed when I said autochthonous while in conversation with him. He rejoindered 'Ah Ron, you have read Ruth Ross's great essay on our New Zealand soil!'

Don was a seriously impressive speaker about the necessity of art. He noted once that 'the act of painting is a concrete expression of a continuing personal dialogue with my environment . . . Any good drawing or painting is to my mind an external gesture towards, or celebration of, those truths upon which we focus to sustain and extend our spiritual priorities'. He was a truly committed painter and one that we cannot forget.

I studied the Kotare over Ratana Church, Te Kao closely again last week. Isn't it one of the key New Zealand paintings of the 1960s? It has become again an icon of New Zealand's 1960s painting. Along with Rita Angus's Fog, Hawkes Bay, Gordon Walters's Painting No 1 and Colin McCahon's Here I Give Thanks to Mondrian?. 

Don Binney himself enjoyed asking such quirky questions of about our art's history and how we regard it. There was, in recent years, the realisation that maybe the art community did not give him as much affirmation as they could have. This could be said about other artists of his generation also.

In 1971, Don contributed to the important Earth/Earth exhibition at the Barry Lett Gallery. The text that he prepared on that occasion is one of the most important of his published statements. It repays a close reading as the original catalogue is rarely encountered. I attach it here.

Don is survived by his wife, Phillipa and daughter Mary. To all of Don's family, the staff of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki extend our heartfelt aroha.

Moe mai i to moenga roa.

Don Binney, Sun shall not burn Thee by day nor moon by night 1966
oil and acrylic on canvas
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, purchased 1966

Remembering Rita Angus

I recently asked on this blog what Rita Angus’s voice sounded like. I was telephoned by Petar Vuletic and he told me that he knew her well towards the end of her life. I asked Petar to draft some recollections about the artist. Petar kindly sent me the following memoir; which I have illustrated with a painting that Rita painted shortly before she met him.
I first met Rita Angus when I bowled up to her home in the 60s. I was a young university student. I arrived unannounced and she graciously received me. After that, we would meet whenever I came to Wellington. This was over a period and I have not thought about it really until now when someone mentioned your blog and that you were interested in what Rita had sounded like.

We would go for long walks around Wellington -for hours at a time and on one occasion for nearly 6 hours. I recall on the last walk we ever had, we would pause every 100 yards or so, for her to rest and then carry on. During these walks, she would be pointing things out that were of interest and relevance to her. For example - the pile of gravestones that had been uprooted from a cemetery to make way for a motorway. This was a short distance from where she lived, landmarks such as the French Maid coffeehouse. On these walks we would be discussing art, what had influenced her and in particular what had influenced her the most. I recall in this regard her telling me that what had been the seminal influence on her art had been an exhibition of Canadian Regional Art (in the 1930s).

I recall her also telling me how upset she was about some of what was being written about her and her art and how strongly she disagreed with it. She disagreed about there being a so-called ‘harsh quality of New Zealand light”. It has nothing to do with my work she had said more than once. Also she showed me some of her works which included small abstract paintings one of which was I thought exceptional. I believe that this work went to North America and I have never seen it since. Curiously, it reminded me of both Malevich and Kandinsky. We talked about other art and artists such as Theo Schoon. I recall her talking about the Milligans who used to host regular meetings for artists in their circle.

After our walks; and sometimes before we set out, she would make me a cup of tea at her home. The china was English bone china. As a consequence of our long walks and the time spent together I have a very distinct recollection of her voice. As you may appreciate, it is difficult to describe such things.

However, as my first language is not English, I have always been interested in accents, and in the different forms of regional and class dialects in New Zealand (as an outsider -born here, but nonetheless apart.) Some districts have terms peculiar to that region for example - containers in which strawberries are sold were called variously: pottles, (Dunedin), punnets, (Wellington), and chips. (Auckland). New Zealanders have considerable variation from province to province and island to island. It may seem less so to those whose first language is English, as one never perceives that one has an accent oneself, instead, it is all about other people.

From my perspective, I should describe her speaking voice as strong and firm, not loud but quite forceful. Clear in enunciation, precise, and never mumbling or indistinct. I should describe her as having a New Zealand educated, provincial accent. Not twangy, reflecting or so it seemed an accent more usual when one is from a comfortable financial background- but particularly such as found in the Hawke’s Bay and lower North Island. Not like the Remuera version of the received pronunciation of English. Nor was it like the Fred Dagg parody of New Zealand English, so beloved by advertising agencies and others who like to over exaggerate, to make a difference when the subtleties are there, anyway.

I have a 92 year old aunt, born in Carterton, and educated there and in Horowhenua, whose grandmother was a teacher and father a farmer, whose accent reminds me very much of Rita Angus. Words and phrases from those places and those times recur in her speech and also remind me of Rita.

This is how it seems to me looking back now after all these years. Rita seemed to like me. She was very open and forthcoming. I doubt that I was unique in this. Over the years I have found it upsetting to hear her described as unpleasant, ill mannered and difficult to approach or talk to. That was not my experience. I found her warm, gracious; receptive to ideas; and to the discussion of art. She did feel used by factions in the art establishment of the time. She did not like this and was quite forceful to me about this. It would not be surprising then if those who tried to manipulate her and her work to their own ends found her unreceptive.
Petar Vuletic

Caption:
Rita Angus
Scrub burning, Northern Hawke's Bay 1965
oil on board
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki
purchased 1966

Haerewa Tribute to Arnold Maanaki Wilson 1928 - 2012

Dr Arnold Manaaki Wilson, MNZN, QSM, Arts Foundation Icon, PhD (Honorary), DipFA (Hons)

Arnold will be dearly missed as the Kaumatua of the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki and kaumatua of our close Haerewa whanau. He led the way for the Gallery in Māori protocols and made everyone in it culturally safe. He blessed Haerewa and with those blessings made us a strong, cohesive group. He blessed every part of the gallery and touched everyone who entered it and those who worked inside, and he blessed the artworks on the walls and in the stores. He imbued the Gallery with his wairua and we mourn his passing.

Arnold was a cultural hero. He will be remembered in the wider community of Aotearoa New Zealand as an extraordinary sculptor and carver. He was at the forefront of the group who challenged the established norms of traditional Māori art and created a new era of Māori Modernism. He was a change agent and his work reflected the new expressions of Māori art that opened the way for younger artists and contributed to burgeoning of Māori art of the 21st century.

Arnold was a remarkable art educator. He taught in secondary schools and as his students, he made us proud of the art forms, we inherited as Māori. He brought the community and huge groups of students together to make murals that told the stories of hapu and iwi around the country from Ratana Pa to the Far North. He led the way in the establishment of guidelines for The Arts, Nga Toi in the NZ Curriculum for schools. Through his work in education, he touched the lives of thousands of students from diverse backgrounds and therefore altered the cultural profile of Aotearoa New Zealand.

We thank his wife Rangitinia and his whanau for lending him to us.

Moe mai ra Arnold ki roto i nga ringaringa manaaki o te Matua-nui-i-te-rangi.

Elizabeth Ellis for Haerewa, Fred Graham, Mere Lodge, Bernard Makoare, Jonathan Mane-Wheoki and Lisa Reihana.

Arnold Manaaki Wilson 1928 - 2012

Kuramihirangi meeting house, Te Rewarewa Marae, Ruatoki, Date unknown

Reference Number: 1/4-002747-F. Taken by an unidentified photographer. Date unknown. National Library of New Zealand

Arnold Manaaki Wilson was born and died in the Year of the Dragon. He would say he had a good life, and he did, as great taniwha do. He iti na Tūhoe, e kata te po.[1]

Arnold lived outside of his Tūhoe homeland for 65-plus years and built extensive relationships with individuals, whanau, hapu, communities and iwi who loved him. The kōrero and knowledge of Arnold’s achievements reside with the people of these places and with his wife Rangitinia and their whanau. Arnold’s early life, however, is not widely known outside intimate circles. His early childhood gives insights into the type of life training he obtained from his people, and by whanau accounts, many handbooks could be written on how this taniwha was trained.    

Arnold’s final return home to Te Rewarewa Marae in Ruatoki was greeted with the elders recounting that Arnold left home aged 11 years under sad circumstances to rise above the difficulties and the realities of the time. They paid tribute to a son who became a vital and important figure in the arts and arts education in Aotearoa New Zealand. As he lay in state between the twin meeting houses Kuramihirangi and Te Rangimoaho (as depicted in the accompanying photo) I was warmed by the accuracy of elders and stunned but not surprised by the length of time Arnold had spent living away from his turangawaewae. It too quickly brought home to me, the years I have spent away from the same valley and what that says about contemporary times.

This is a summary of the early part of Arnold’s story to give some indication of the extraordinary life he lived. Arnold was born 11 December 1928 and raised by an exceptional cast of whanau members. He was the youngest member in a family of five children. His mother was Taiha Ngakewhi Te Wakaunua and his father Fredrick George Wilson. His siblings were Te Waiarangi, Hoki, Fredrick and Thomas.

Arnold’s mother's father, Heteraka Te Wakaunua, was a charismatic political visionary leader for Te Mahurehure and Ngāti Rongo hapu – indeed for all Tūhoe. Like other tribal leaders, Te Wakaunua placed a high value on whanaungatanga (kinship), manaakitanga (respect & kindness), aroha ki te tangata (care for people), matemateāone (yearning) and the social and political wellbeing of his people. Arnold maintained these values throughout his life as we can see this in the way he titled some of his sculptures.[2] A carved pou of his grandfather Te Wakaunua holds a prominent position on the poho (porch) of Te Rangimoaho wharenui.  

Arnold’s childhood patterns changed with the death of his mother during the great flu epidemic of the 1930s, when he was aged five. His paternal grandmother took charge of his care and life. To keep the memory of his mother alive and the legacy of his grandfather as a touchstone in his life, Arnold would be addressed as Te Wakaunua, as if he were his grandfather. His grandmother Mariana Creek-Wilson passed away when he was 11 years old and from then Arnold became a whāngai, whereby the wider Wilson whānau assumed responsibility for him. Mariana Creek-Wilson was from the Tokopa whānau of Ngāti Tarawhai. Arnold’s paternal grandmother was Tuihi Tokapa. 

Arnold’s early schooling at Ruatoki Native School focused on the three R’s – reading, writing and arithmetic – and spoken Māori was forbidden in the classroom and playground. All year round school uniforms for boys were gumboots and long pant dungarees or what Arnold and his schoolmates called ‘kumfoot and tungaree’ Spinning potaka[3] with flax and playing marbles were favourite playground activities for boys as was eeling in the river. The schoolmaster and senior boys were the local barbers for students in the community. The students grew most of the eucalyptus, pine and lawsonianas planted in the community, which they tended from seedlings. Childhood playmates were whanau and became life-long friends.

Arnold’s childhood was similar to many whānau in rural communities in the 1930s. When a major project needed attending to the whārua (entire community) rallied. Planting willow trees on the banks of the Ohinemataroa was one of those community efforts to keep the river from taking the land.  Arnold played his part planting the banks with willow nearby Te Rewarewa with his father. This planting also protected the favourite swimming hole of the children located under the Ruatoki Bridge.

Arnold’s whānau were hard working and community-minded people. The Wilsons owned and operated the local bakery-come-grocery store, the bowling green, billiard hall and the Ruatoki tennis courts. These amenities became important meeting places in the community and served to familiarise the population to the world beyond Ruatoki. Opposite the Wilsons shop was a larger trading post, named for the family who owned and operated the business. It was called the Middlemas shop and it housed the Post Office. Another smaller, no less important trading concern was owned and operated by my great grandfather, Wiremu Tereina from Ruatahuna, who married my great grandmother Pihitahi Wharetuna. His store was a favourite place for children for the range of boiled lollies he would stock.  Wiremu went on to start the first a bus service for the Ruatoki community and his bus was named Te Kauru.

Arnold was a star student at Ruatoki Native School and his artistic abilities were recognised by head teacher Mr Hans Hauesler. During the tangi, Aunty Anituatua Black recalled how she and younger cousins admired Arnold’s drawing abilities. He would draw using pencil or chalk and copy images sourced from postcards and visual material supplied by Mr Hauesler. Often these images were of things he had not yet seen in real life including images of English garden flowers such as hollyhocks in snow scenes. Another mentor from Ruatoki School was Mr Arthur Boswell who was very gentlemanly and a stickler for getting things right. When Arnold was not drawing, he would could be found working in the family garden, milking cows or attending the orchard. His personhood and worldview was shaped by many relationships inside Ruatoki and by individuals, extended family and the wider Tūhoe community.

These are among my favourite memories and conversations I shared with Arnold. He was a great storyteller, supporter and beloved uncle who always saw the positive in all things and all people.   As an auspicious full moon watched over the tangi proceedings and followed the bereaved whanau back to Auckland I felt I was witness to ancestral wisdom through the saying, Kua tae koe ki Paerau te huinga o te kahurangi’ – You have arrived at the great meeting place of the ancestors.

---

[1] He iti na Tūhoe e kata te po - A few Tūhoe and the underworld laughs. This means a few Tūhoe are the equal of many from another tribe. 

[2] He Tangata He Tangata, Tane Mahuta, Te Tu a Te Wahine etc

[3] A potaka is a spinning top either carved from totara or kauri, or fashioned from pinecones.