Korurangi

I have now been working at the Gallery four weeks – I had to check my calendar as it feels like time is moving so fast. I have been tasked with a number of projects, most under the guidance of Indigenous Curator Māori Art Ngahiraka Mason, to ensure that I am meeting the high standards that the Gallery sets.

These projects include uploading information to Vernon (a collection management system), identifying works in the collection that require copyright permission for display on the web, working on extending programming for the My Country 'Story Corner', creating a Learning Centre activity space for the next big exhibition, conducting research into the Gallery’s collection and video archives and – not least of all – putting together programming for the upcoming month of Matariki.

The Matariki programme is taking up the majority of my time at this stage, as I have committed to a tight deadline with a wide ranging programme involving screenings, art bites, family drop-in activities, public sculpture walks and even an internal project that involves te reo T-shirts and staff participation (more on this later).

To help myself centre programming ideas I devised what I saw to be the five core principals of Matariki. These are not mutually exclusive themes but were guiding points for considering ‘does this fit with the kaupapa of Matariki?’ I decided that all programming must connect to two or more components of the kaupapa to be both focused and succinct while remaining diverse.

The five points of my Matariki kaupapa are:

• Te Ao Māori (Māori world) – The meaning and tradition of Matariki, stories and significance
• Korero (dialogue) – language, discussion, talks, communication, interpretation (this month of Matariki also includes te wiki o te reo Māori – Māori language week)
• Kai (food) – nurturing, growing, harvesting, sharing of food
• Tangata (people) – Whānau, family, whakapapa, relationships, intergenerational learning
• Whenua (land) – Site, history, place, architecture, environment, sustainability

I think the Gallery realises the importance of Te Ao Māori (a Māori world) and by encouraging me to actively seek to partner and create content and understanding around Matariki, they are offering the chance to shape the perception of ‘Māori’ for the many people connected to the Gallery.

My hope is that by creating engaging content around Matariki, it will help to further the understanding of the value of all things Māori as well as the inclusive nature of relationships and togetherness that Matariki inspires. For communities who may feel under represented this is your chance to be a part of the Gallery, share your uniqueness and add to the complex tapestry that is Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.

Te Ao Māori is reflected in the redeveloped architecture through works by Fred Graham, Arnold Manaaki Wilson and Lonnie Hutchinson. It is also apart of the building’s architectural conception, The realm of Tāne: ‘Inspiration was drawn from the parkland setting of the Gallery with adjacent shelter of mature pōhutakawa trees, Māori consider the bush the realm of Tāne Mahuta, a place where spiritual and creative renewal occurs. This became a central leitmotif of the design.’ⁱⁱ For me, all these structural inclusions set up a place of engagement and now it is about connecting people, art, life, site and architecture. To increase the presence of the people reflected in structure would be to energise and complete the Gallery’s purpose. The ongoing presence of Māori has been literally immortalised in stone and wood by these three artists.

Image 1                               Image 2                                                Image 3

To me these works say: You are represented here and your voice and presence is welcome. I must mention how amazing and historically uplifting it is that at this very moment the Gallery has two Indigenous focused shows running simultaneously Five Māori Painters curated by Ngahiraka Mason and My Country: Contemporary Art from Black Australia curated by Bruce McLean, Curator Indigenous Australian Art, QAGOMA, who is a Wirri/Birri-Gubba man with heritage from the central coast of Queensland.

– Martin Awa Clarke Langdon, Toi Māori intern
_____________________________________________________

ⁱ The title of this blog Korurangi references an exhibition of the same name held at Auckland Art Gallery in 1995. Korurangi: ‘a Māori motif in which two spirals surround each other without meeting – a coexistence that recognises difference.’ –  notes from the exhibition introduction, Korurangi: New Maori Art 1995.

ⁱⁱ Chris Saines, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki – A Place for Art, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 2013, p 39. This kōrero was provided to the Gallery by Haerewa, the Gallery’s Māori advisory group, through their representative, Bernard Makoare.

Image 1. Arnold Manaaki Wilson, He Aha Te Wa – Moments in Time, 2010
Image 2. Fred Graham, Te Waka Toi o Tāmaki, 2011
Image 3. Lonnie Hutchinson, Te Taumata, 2011

Papunya Tula art from the Chartwell Collection

Billy Stockman Tjapaltjarri,  Budgerigar Dreaming At Ilpitirri 1987 

Soon after my family and I moved to Sydney in 1999, I started as a volunteer at the Mosman Art Gallery. Not long after, a touring exhibition of work from Papunya Tula artists opened at the gallery and I was asked to take a tour of the show for the public.

I was somewhat astounded as I did not know anything about Papunya Tula art, couldn’t find relevant locations on a map, and had never visited that part of Australia or knew any of the artists. How could I take this tour based on zero knowledge but a lot of curiosity to learn? I decided the best policy was to ask people in the group that arrived for the tour, to take ME on the tour instead and it worked really well as people in the group had all sorts of connections and knowledge of the place and the artists and I started to learn about the history of the Papunya Art movement.

So my limited knowledge of Papunya Tula began, more from an exploratory position of unknowing, if you like: from the position of the outsider wanting to learn more.

Now, many years later, with the opening of My Country at Auckland Art Gallery, I have revisited the work and this time, I had the Aboriginal works from the Chartwell Collection to draw on when considering the influence and impact of the Papunya Tula art movement on Australian art.

Over the years, my father Rob acquired some major works by Aboriginal artists for the Chartwell Collection. This is a collection of New Zealand and Australian contemporary art held on long-term loan at Auckland Art Gallery and it holds fine examples of works by major Papunya Tula artists such as Billy Stockman Tjapaltjarri, Charlie Tjaruru Tjungurrayi and Mick Namerari Tjapaltjarri, all senior artists who were involved in the establishment of the Papunya Tula Pty Ltd in the early 1970s.

Recently, researcher Ariane Craig-Smith looked into the development of this collection of work and wrote about it on the Chartwell Collection website. (Ariane Craig-Smith, 2014: www.chartwell.org.nz)

As Ariane noted, it was very unusual to be looking at Aboriginal work in the 1980s – especially coming from a collecting perspective in New Zealand. As Rob Gardiner explained to her, it was about that time that he was visiting Australia regularly to see major exhibitions and purchase works for the Collection. ‘Trips were planned to include visits to galleries showing contemporary Aboriginal artists and I was also interested in the work of Australian artists Ian Fairweather and Tony Tuckson,’ Rob explains. Driving his interest in the painting process and style of Fairweather, Tuckson, and the Aboriginal painters, was his curiosity about mark-making and the picture surface, which firstly drew him to the works of Papunya Tula artists, then to the astonishing work of Emily Kame Kngwarreye, which he first discovered at the Utopia Gallery. As he describes it, ‘at the time there was a perception that one should understand and respect the meanings and stories driving Aboriginal works, from an anthropological point of view. But I was encountering these works without that knowledge and could only respond by empathy with their formal content, the energy of their marks, and the painterly languages involved.’

Mick Namerari Tjapaltjarri Untitled 1994

Billy Stockman Tjapaltjarri, Charlie Tjaruru Tjungurrayi and Mick Namerari Tjapaltjarri were integral to the development of the Papunya Tula art movement, meeting the teacher Geoffrey Bardon when he arrived to teach at the local school in Papunya in 1971. The Central Desert government settlement of Papunya is 240 kilometers north west of Alice Springs. As a result of the Government’s assimilation policies, Papunya was the last of the Aboriginal reserves to be set up by the Federal Government in 1961. By the time Bardon arrived, it was a community of over 1000 people beset by poor living conditions, health problems and great inter-tribal conflicts between groups. Bardon started to work on art projects with the children and this work was to become a matter of interest to the Aboriginal adults such as Billy Stockman Tjapaltjarri, the school yardman, and village councillors such as Mick Namerari Tjapaltjarri. They were intrigued by the painting he was encouraging in the classroom with the children and later were among the group involved in the establishment of Papunya Tula Pty Ltd.

Initially using available school supplies of poster paint, paint brushes and paper, as well as found boards and off cuts, the rapidly growing group of artists produced a lot of work over a short, intensive period of painting, including the creation of five murals at the school: A Practice Dreaming, Widows Dreaming mural, Wallaby Dreaming mural, Snake Dreaming mural and the Honey Ant Dreaming in two versions.

Years later, in the late 1980s, these artists’ careers developed further with Billy Stockman Tjapaltjarri representing Papunya Tula artists on several international cultural exchange projects and travelling to New York in 1988 for the opening of the ‘Dreamings’ show at the Asia Society Gallery. This was the year after he painted the work now in the Chartwell Collection. Charlie Tjaruru Tjungurrayi was the first Papunya artist to have a retrospective exhibition, held at Orange Regional Gallery in 1987, the same year Chartwell acquired his work.

Jonathan Jones untitled (sum of the parts) 2010/2014

More recent acquisitions to Chartwell include the fluorescent tube, light installation by Jonathan Jones, untitled (sum of the parts), 2010, currently on show in Auckland Art Gallery’s north Atrium, and the digital work, Light Painting (2010–11), by Nyapanyapa Yunupingu. Just as Billy Stockman Tjapatljarri was one of the first artists to begin painting large-scale canvases in the 1970s, these artists are exploring technology in new ways.

– Sue Gardiner, Chartwell Trust

Image credits:

Billy Stockman Tjapaltjarri
Budgerigar Dreaming At Ilpitirri 1987
acrylic on linen
Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 1987 

Mick Namerari Tjapaltjarri
Untitled 1994
acrylic on linen
Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 1995 

Jonathan Jones
untitled (sum of the parts) 2010/2014
fluorescent tubes, wiring, electrical cable
Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 2010

Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki: a working environment with a big friendly team – and even bigger smiles

I have recently begun to work at the Gallery as the Toi Māori Intern. This opportunity was made possible by the support of Toi Māori, a charitable trust that encourages and supports the potential of contemporary Māori art with the aim to ‘promote the uniqueness, quality and cultural expression of Māori art’.

So, who am I? I’m Martin Awa Clarke Langdon and I recently completed my Masters in Fine Art at The University of Auckland. I am a practising artist based in South Auckland with a background in graphic design, sign writing and print. My multidisciplinary art practice looks at the spaces between cultures, spaces of tension and conversation. I whakapapa to Tainui and Ngāi Tahu and was born and raised in Papatoetoe, Auckland.

Auckland Art Gallery always seemed a far off place to me. I thought I might only be associated with through my art making – that at some point in my career I could create a work of distinction, one that may be included in a collection such as Auckland’s.

Before starting here I saw art institutions like the Gallery as places that provided mediation (to those in and outside of the artworld) in the ongoing conversation of the whakapapa of Aotearoa New Zealand art. Now that I am here, I feel humbled by the access I am given and the view I have into the way this art institution runs, as well as being able to learn more about te ao toi – the art world. I never considered a possibility of being on the other side of those stanchions, working behind the scenes to make things happen.

Auckland Art Gallery is the largest organisation I've ever worked in – its staff is just over 100 people. My next largest workplace had a staff of 12. The Gallery has its internal networks of teams who work in the fields of curatorship, visitor services, marketing, art conservation, editorial, exhibition design, learning programmes, retail and more. It is also a public institution, part of the Auckland Council structure and accountable for its operations in the same way the city’s other facilities are – for example the stadiums, MOTAT and the zoo.

The magnitude of the organisation is slightly daunting. There are so many layers and components that make the Gallery work. From the outside we see a clean, well-maintained and ever-changing display of art and public programmes, which show art engagement at its best. I think the measure of the Gallery’s success is just how effortlessly these exhibitions, spanning medieval to contemporary art and including almost every medium, appear for our pleasure.

Now that I am part of the behind-the-scenes machine, I ask myself where and how does a Māori/Pakeha artist from South Auckland fit in? Where I am from, institutions like this are seen as alienating, elite places, too hard to access and where ‘we’ don’t fit in or are even appreciated for what we know and what ‘we’ bring to the conversation. But, my experience in the first few weeks has been amazing: I am starting to realise the value of what I bring in experience and understanding. I am also starting to engage with the content housed in the Gallery’s collection – artwork, text and archives. I feel the richness of knowledge the Gallery holds.

And, as a ‘newby’, the staff here appear welcoming, friendly and helpful. Offers of a helping hand and useful bites of information from different people have allowed me to better understand the Gallery and all its interwoven threads, hopefully providing inroads to a successful transition into being ‘part of the team’. The many friendly faces and even more helpful words have provided some relief to the initial feeling of awe. 

Watching the team in action is something to behold – everyone taking on their responsibilities with confidence, working alongside and interacting with colleagues to ensure the smooth running of the place that you see when you visit us.

– Martin Awa Clarke Langdon, Toi Māori Intern

Old stories, new voices

Vincent Serico, Carnavon collision (Big map) 2006 (installation view)

Artists in My Country and Five Māori Painters, two exhibitions currently on show at Auckland Art Gallery, tell stories about Dreaming, family, politics and contemporary life. Many of these stories don’t appear in – and some are actively written out of – mainstream histories. The artworks that these artists create offer affecting new ways of considering and understanding the past and the world in which we exist.

Vincent Serico, Carnavon collision (Big map) 2006

In the first room of My Country, under the theme of ‘My History’, hangs Vincent Serico’s Carnavon collision (Big map), 2006, at first glance a seemingly peaceful history painting, but one which in fact subtly allude to violent incidents between white settlers and the Jiman people in Central Queensland in the 19th century. With an eye on the past, Serico records memories passed down from others with naïf-like simplicity, he went on to produce a folio of images depicting tribal histories in Some people are Stories. These works needle accepted versions of the past – the victors’ histories – giving a voice to those who were silenced while keeping Indigenous knowledge alive.

Storytelling in art also responds to contemporary life and events as they happen – creating immediate visual interpretations. Aboriginal artist Gordon Hookey and senior Māori artist Robyn Kahukiwa offer contemporary perspectives on national politics with works such as King Hit (for Queen and country), 1999 and Bloodscent 2004. Hookey’s painted punching bag and gloves in King Hit critique leader of the One Nation party Pauline Hanson’s position and takes a weighty aim at the Howard government and its relationship with Hanson’s party during the late 1990s. Robyn Kahukiwa’s Bloodscent, a response to Don Brash’s infamous Orewa speech of 2004, in which he called for an end to Treaty grievances and ‘one rule for all’, viscerally alludes to the speech’s fuelling of racist sentiment. This is consciousness-raising storytelling reminding the viewer of surprisingly recent events.

Gordon Hookey, King Hit (for Queen and country) 1999 (installation view)

With recognisable and provocative imagery, Hookey and Kahukiwa interrogate the actions of political figures, and challenge the sanctioned speeches and policies of their nation’s governments. Using animal allegories, figurative characters and iconic symbols painted in a bold, colourful style they evoke deep concerns about the reality of Indigenous people’s lives. In Hookey’s Defy, 2010 kangaroos, native to Australia, represent Indigenous people, while in King Hit (for Queen and country), 1999, politicians and the police become pigs – animals some consider, unclean and which were introduced to Australia. Even with their pronounced porcine features, the cartoonish figures of King Hit remain recognisable as Pauline Hanson, David Oldfield and Prime Minister John Howard. Under the umbrella of nationalism, Hanson advocated for policies unsympathetic to cultural difference. On the canvas of King Hit, Hookey symbolises the power structure of the state with row upon row of police, all of whom look the same. But it’s not all dark, as Hookey wraps his Orwellian scene round a piece of gym equipment, the disturbing nature and impact of the imagery is softened with humour. Hookey likened his bag to a dart board hanging in a staff room onto which someone has stuck an image of the boss. With the Aboriginal flag painted on a pair of boxing gloves Hookey suggests the oppressed can fight back by making the king hit.

Robyn Kahukiwa, Bloodscent 2004

Contrasting Hookey’s cartoonish lampooning, Kahukiwa’s Bloodscent offers a response to the Orewa speech which appears like a scene from a frightening fairy tale. Kahukiwa also uses animals to represent problems in society: the mythical and leonine Taniwha, emblazoned with the Tino Rangitiratanga flag, arches its head back while a pack of grey dogs stalk it from behind symbolising those in society who attack when a group or individual is weakened. Like the best fairy tales or myths, the messages here run deep, and have the power to amplify for greater effect and better clarity.

- Julia Waite, Assistant Curator

Image credits:

Vincent Serico 
WakkaWakka and KabiKabi people
QLD 1949-2008
Carnarvon collision (Big map) 2006
Synthetic polymer paint on linen
203 x 310cm
Acc. 2007.245
Purchased 2007. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation

Gordon Hookey
Waanyi people
Australia  QLD/NSW  b.1961
King hit (for Queen and Country) 1999
Synthetic polymer paint and oil on leather punching bag and gloves with steel swivel and rope noose
Bag: 96 x 34cm (diam.);  gloves:  29 x 16 x 12cm (each);  rope noose: 250cm
Purchased 2000.  Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant

Robyn Kahukiwa
Bloodscent 2004
oil on canvas
private collection, Wellington
image courtesy of the artist

Taking the Leap: The Youth Advisory Group Pilot

PART ONE: WHERE DO I START?

This year we are piloting our first Youth Advisory Group (yet to be re-named by the young people involved – something snappier, more relevant, and ideally less formal). Thirteen young people who have previously been involved in our Youth Media Internships are using this year to plan and run programmes for the Gallery. Aimed at young people, planned by young people.

The purposes of the Learning Programmes team, the Educators, and the Advisory Group 

Their interpretation of RESPECT, IMAGINATION and CHALLENGES – the values they set as a group 

Being a pilot programme, we wanted to use young people who were already we knew through previous programming, as we wanted them to already be familiar with the Gallery and its processes. As they were the guinea pigs, we felt this existing relationship put us and them on safer ground. We could feel out this year, tweak things, and get their input and evaluations. Knowing we could offer them a safe and creative space to work in developing leadership skills and programming. I feel the reality is, a pilot is inherently ‘less safe’ for all involved than an established programme. I trusted these young people, and hopefully they trusted the Gallery, to use them in this experiment! Based on all our many inevitable learnings this year, applications will open up more widely next time around.

Overseas, there are existing models for youth committees at galleries and museums, so we are not inventing anything new. So while we have an idea of where these groups can end up in the long term, we were going in blind in terms of the short term – what did these existing programmes overseas do in their first year to get to that point? How much ownership did the young people have in the development of the values, goals and outcomes? How much staff planning time was this going to take?! Etc etc! All the while, wanting to create something that was unique and relevant to these young people, Auckland, and this Gallery.

Taking part in an ice breaker – searching for artworks then creating a tableaux

All these questions could only be answered by taking the leap. While this group of young people sit under the purposes of the Learning Programmes team – and the groups own purpose is to create participatory, collaborate, Gallery-based events for young people – within these parameters there was plenty of room to move and experiment.

So far, the members have set the values of the group. They are going to value: Imagination, Respect, and Challenges. They have set personal goals for the group (things within their control and not outcome based). They have researched overseas models and considered questions like:

• Were the events planned by a youth committee or by the Gallery? 
• Which events/programmes seemed to fit with our values? 
• How accessible were these events? 
• What type of audience were they trying to attract? 

On top of the potentially heavy, overwhelming journey ahead, each meeting I try to get them involved in a Gallery programme so they are learning first hand what is possible here, what we already have on offer, and have fun! They have taken part in:

A Drop-in Drawing Session 

Doodle in the Dark (one of our Gallery Games)

Kangaroo Crew 

So far so good! They are a really enthusiastic, creative and inquisitive group, and I have no doubt through this process that they will learn a huge amount about not just the gallery, but about themselves as learners and people.

Next time I will talk more about what I have had to change and adapt through the process and not such a blow-by-blow account of what happens.

– Selina Anderson, Senior Gallery Educator

Links to research mentioned:
http://collectives.tate.org.uk/
http://www.mca.com.au/series/generationext/

For more information about our Youth programmes:
http://www.aucklandartgallery.com/learning/youth

Recent acquisition – Theo Schoon

Do you know anyone who saw Theo Schoon dancing at Auckland's Town Hall? I would really like to speak to someone who witnessed his dance performance there. I have never associated Theo with being a performer in public but these images show he was. The public are not present, they have either come and gone, or they are soon to arrive.

I recently purchased these two small photographs of Theo for the Gallery's collection.  The images have been taken specially for the artist - he is performing for the photograph's occasion. They show more of the location than his other dance self-portraits. Those examples are studio-based self-portraits where the lighting was controlled.

These previously unknown portraits show that technical issues of working in a hall not made for photo-sessions influenced the resultant pictures. Theo preferred studio light in interiors - he'd spent much time with Wellington society photographer Spencer Digby (as had Brian Brake). Spence was a lighting expert and his wonderful portraits attest to his skill. Theo had exacting standards so the haphazard lighting may well not have pleased him.

It is not generally known that Theo Schoon was an accomplished practitioner of traditional Javanese dance. He collected the appropriate costumes and appropriate head wear. He possessed numerous recordings of Javanese music. When I visited him in Australia he danced for me while seated cross-legged on his bed. For me it was a personal experience of Asian dance the like of which I was then unfamiliar with.

During the 1940s and 1950s Theo Schoon demonstrated Javanese dance to appreciative audiences in Wellington, Christchurch and Auckland. There was affirmative and interested newspaper coverage of  his performances. Theo also gave personal tuition of traditional Javanese dance and he was the first person to do this in New Zealand.

I have met some people who witnessed Theo dancing privately at Auckland. These performances occurred at parties, mostly during the 1950s. Colin McCahon told me that he was charmed and surprised by Theo's skill at dancing. Ross Fraser said Theo's dancing was mesmerising. I saw for myself how he used hand gestures to tell stories.

The hardest words to say…

Tony Albert, Sorry 2008, Found kitsch objects applied to vinyl letters,
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Image courtesy: QAGOMA 

My Country includes artworks that directly comment on Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s 2008 Apology to members of the Stolen Generations and their families. Tony Albert’s Sorry, 2008, spells out the climax of Rudd’s speech in large black type, but reverses the word to read YRROS and in doing so calls into question the effect of the Apology. For Albert, ‘Sorry is just a word which means nothing if it is not backed up by real outcomes.’ The objects that decorate this text – ashtrays, plates and other pieces of Aboriginalia – were picked up by the artist in second-hand stores. They show a persistent representation of Aboriginal bodies in items of Australian home décor and tourist souvenirs. Male figures dominate – a figure holding boomerang and spear faces off against a kangaroo on a cork beer mat in one of many examples of that ethnographic stereotype, the ‘noble warrior’. Stereotypes such as this, authored by someone else, erase individuality. They do not reflect the realities for the Stolen Generations, or those before them. Covering arguably the most important word of Rudd’s Apology in the material which helped build a generalised and damaging perception of Aboriginal people offers uncomfortable visual evidence of why the Apology was necessary.

A group of works in the exhibition bring the realities of those generations and families affected by racist laws and practices to light, bridging the gap between collective and individual histories and emphasising the personal with artworks which embody specific familial stories and practices. Some of these works relate to the body, recalling objects that were worn or carried, and convey a sense of everyday realities – their physicality evokes the spirit of the individual and their daily struggles.

Dale Harding, Unnamed 2009, lead and steel wire
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Image courtesy: QAGOMA 

Dale Harding’s Unnamed, 2012, a lead breast plate inscribed with his grandmother’s new name – ‘W38’ – connotes the harsh treatments and the specific use of ‘king plates’ as a method of identification. The rust and weight of the object with its alphanumeric code symbolises the dehumanising process of classification and control; its decayed surface suggests a forgotten or buried history. Looking at the breastplate gives us a sense of connection with Harding’s grandmother, and we empathise with the indignity she would have felt being forced to hang the large, heavy plate around her neck and having her name replaced by a code.

Wilma Walker, Kakan (Baskets) 2002 (installation view) 

Individual stories are powerfully communicated in works which convey a sense of the physical presence of the body. Wilma Walker’s Kakan (Baskets), 2002 recalls the baskets made by her mother. As a baby, Walker was hidden in baskets like these to avoid being forcibly removed from her family – to avoid becoming one of the Stolen Generations. Looking at the baskets’ bulbous forms we can easily imagine her tiny body curled up inside and covered by leaves.

Foreground Wilma Walker, Kakan (Baskets) 2002,
background Tony Albert, Sorry 2008 (installation view) 

One of the most striking moments in the exhibition is the presentation of these baskets in front of Tony Albert’s Sorry. Here, the life of someone personally affected by a state policy in practise confronts Rudd’s Apology, as interpreted by Albert. Walker’s handmade baskets, infused with the memories of her early life and with the making traditions of her people, evoke a sense of intimacy and human frailty and contrast the brittleness of the mass-produced Aboriginalia in Sorry. Both works remind us of trauma suffered and together create a confronting reminder about the need to honestly face historical facts.

Bindi Cole, I forgive you 2012, Emu feathers on MDF board
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Image courtesy: QAGOMA

In the exhibition’s final room Bindi Cole’s response to the 2008 Apology is writ large in emu feathers attached to letters. The sensual and protective qualities of I forgive you, 2012 – its layers of soft plumage – look capable of absorbing shock, which in forgiving one must do. Like Wilma Walker’s baskets, I forgive you was made by hand, each feather stuck down individually to create each word of the powerful sentence. In contrast to the critical position of Albert’s Sorry, and its seeming rejection of the Apology, Cole’s feathered forgiveness is empowering – reconciling differences and opening the door for future relations. According to Cole, ‘forgiveness is about taking your power back . . . no longer allowing that thing that hurt to live inside you.’

– Julia Waite, Assistant Curator, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki 


Image credits:

Tony Albert
Girramay people
QLD b.1981
Sorry 2008
Found kitsch objects applied to vinyl letters
99 objects: 200 x 510 x 10cm (installed)
The James C Sourris, AM, Collection
Purchased 2008 with funds from James C Sourris through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation

Dale Harding
Bidjara and Ghungalu peoples
QLD  b.1982
Unnamed 2009
Lead and steel wire
35 x 26 x 3cm
Gift of Julie Ewington through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2013

Wilma Walker
Kuku Yalanji people
QLD  b.1929 d.2008
Kakan (Baskets)  2002
Twined black palm (Normanbya normanbyi) fibre (basket), with lawyer cane (Calamus sp.) fibre (handle)
Three baskets:  93 x 37 x 36cm;  77 x 29 x 26cm;  68 x 32 x 31cm
Commissioned 2002 with funds from the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant

Bindi Cole 
Wathaurung people 
VIC b.1975 
I forgive you 2012 
Emu feathers on MDF board 11 pieces: 100 x 800cm (installed, approx.)
Purchased 2012. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation

Hans Ulrich Obrist

Anyone with interested in contemporary art must have read books by uber-curator Hans Ulrich Obrist. I asked our librarian Tom Irwin to research holdings of his books in New Zealand libraries. He found 137 entries. All can be inter-loaned via your local library.

Click here for New Zealand library holdings of Obrist's books.

One of my favourite Obrist books is do it – the compendium. This is a publication that affirms connections between life and art. It is humorous and engaging. For instance, Ben Kinmont suggests that we “invite a stranger into [our] home for breakfast.” 

"In 1993 I was at Café Select in Paris with Bertrand Lavier and Christian Boltanski discussing instruction works and how-to manuals and then we had this idea: what would happen if we started an exhibition that wouldn’t ever stop?" -  Hans Ulrich Obrist

Obrist’s book marks the 20th anniversary of his collaborative art project.  Artists prepare texts which become instructions for others to make artworks. Over 50 do it projects have happened in many locations.

Dwell has prepared a slide show about the publication.

Another profiles the book and quotes Louise Bourgeois.

hereelsewhere reiterates the life/art reality of the do it project

Brainpickings has a terrific response to Obrist’s book noting that Nairy Baghramian recommends “Following Gertrude Stein, every now and then sit with your back on nature.”

“do it is a kind of Catcher in the Rye for the curatorial world; it is a transformative mandatory read that connects a blur of dots into a cohesive and inviting image of both the art universe and the universe of ideas.”  - Douglas Coupland

Recent acquisition – Petrus Van Der Velden

Stanley Andrew
Petrus Van Der Velden
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki
purchased 2013

Not many people know Petrus Van Der Velden and Vincent Van Gogh were friends. They were intimate enough for Van Gogh to write about Van Der Velden in three letters to his brother Theo. I had their friendship in mind when, recently, I acquired for the Gallery's collection the final photo-portrait of  Van Der Velden made by Stanley Andrew at Wellington during 1909.

Andrew was Wellington's most active official portraitist prior to World War I and 95 of his negatives are held at Wellington's Alexander Turnbull Library. Artists like Eileen Duggan, Anna Pavlova and Dorothy Kate Richmond were recorded by Andrew. Yet, it appears that Petrus Van Der Velden was the earliest artist to commission a portrait while Andrew was a photographer. He began his career using a quasi-pictorialist, almost moody style. Later he refined this expressionist approach into one with a deeper focus and less gradation in overall lighting. This results in a more flattering response to your subjects and they often don't look their age.

I was attracted to the portrait of Van Der Velden not only for its physical quality but because it reveals the difficulties and strain that living in New Zealand as a full time artist had been for him. He had a tetchy temperament and did not like the fact that the art scene here was nowhere as modern as what he knew in the Holland which he had departed from.

Modern art reached New Zealand with the arrival of James Nairn and Van Der Velden in 1890. Both were full-time artists and they wanted to maintain a serious and professional career. Van Der Velden was determined and opinionated but we simply do not know, as Rodney Wilson has noted, why the painter immigrated to New Zealand.

The Canterbury College School of Art in Christchurch refused to give him employment, not a surprising decision due to its insular suspicion of outsiders. Consequently, Van Der Velden became an itinerant immigrant – living 8 years in Christchurch, 6 years in Sydney and 9 years in Wellington.

The first image here is the vintage print that Auckland Art Gallery has recently purchased, with the original photographers' tinted paper and strawcard mounting mattes. It is signed at left by the photographer and has the Stanley Andrew blind-stamp at the lower right hand side of the print.

Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand
S.P. Andrew collection (PAColl -3739) reference 1/1-014987;G

Here is a cropped contact print of the variant Stanley Andrew portrait made at the same time. It is taken from the negative held in the Alexander Turnbull Library in the National Library of New Zealand. He appears more animated than the  portrait which we acquired, but his head appears to large for the body and is distorted in scale.

Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand
S.P. Andrew collection (PAColl -3739) reference 1/1-014988;G

This is an entire uncropped scan of the negative of the portrait that the Gallery has acquired. Note how the hands have been cropped out to give provide more prominence to the artist's face. It is almost heroic in its final cropped version. I believe that he made this version for his family's own use and not for any form of self-promotion.

Am I correct in noting that Petrus Van Der Velden was a friend of Vincent Van Gogh? Or was he simply one of his acquaintances? I keep coming back to the conclusion that he was a friend; especially judging from tone of Vincent's comments about Petrus included in three letters that he wrote to his brother Leo.

On Wednesday 1 November 1882 Vincent comments on seeing two drawings by Pieter (Petrus) in the magazine De Zwaluw.

On, or about, Saturday 21 April 1883, Vincent notes: "I met Van der V. once, and he made a good impression on me at the time. I was reminded of the character of Felix Holt the radical by Eliot. There’s something broad and rough in him that pleases me greatly — something like the roughness of torchon. A man who evidently doesn’t seek civilization in outward things but is much further inwardly, much much much further than most people. In short, he’s a true artist, and I’d like to get to know him for I would trust him and I’m sure I would learn from him."

On, or about, Wednesday 11 July 1883, Vincent writes "I saw Van der Velden once last year — at De Bock’s one evening when we looked at etchings. I’ve already written to you that he made a very favorable impression on me at the time,although he said little and wasn’t much company that evening. But the impression he immediately made on me was that he was a solid, genuine painter."

All of Vincent Van Gogh’s letters have been translated into English and are available to read online.
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On 9 July 1896, Lawrence Jones of Dunedin reproduced the following early portrait of Petrus Van Der Velden. (I am grateful to the wonderful blog Early Otago Photographers for this image). Van Der Velden was aged 59 years and about to become a New Zealand citizen, but he was not prospering as a fulltime artist and had almost halved his fee for private life classes (based on 13 sessions of 2.5 hours each). There is a vast difference between this first portrait of Van Der Velden in New Zealand and the final one which we have acquired.

Meanings We Share

Bindi Cole, I  forgive you 2012

Two exhibitions at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki give prominence to histories and ideas in which viewers can find shared commonality with the art. Numerous artworks in both My Country: Contemporary Art from Black Australia and Five Māori Painters convey deep and strong connectedness to place and people. These exhibitions from Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand cross cultural boundaries, and indicate that no matter what our background is, as viewers we can connect with the ideas found in the art.

Many artists in both exhibitions make art as a way of ‘keeping culture strong’ or passing down culturally specific ideas and practices to younger generations or others in their communities. Alick Tipoti, senior artist from the Torres Strait Islands north of Queensland, is the creator of one of the first works to greet visitors to My Country. Tipoti’s print illustrates the seafaring culture that is historically part of the Torres Strait Islands people. However, his image, Kuyku Garpathamai Mabaig, 2007 also resonates with the classical warrior figures from ancient Greece, Rome and other places. Tipoti employs a marvelous technique in his linocuts, which he has developed on the basis of formal art training, and has led to his works winning accolades such as the Telstra Art Award. However, for Tipoti, the songs that he sings in the presence of such artworks are equally as important as the images for passing on cultural knowledge.

Vernon Ah Kee’s large scale portraits draw the viewer into a close and personal engagement with the life-like figures. A man and child look directly at us from Ah Kee’s canvases in My Country, beautifully rendered in charcoal and conté. Strength of character is evident in the gaze of the sitters. Ah Kee has made more than 30 such images of his relatives, based on early 20th-century photos now stored in national archives and libraries. In Neither Pride nor Courage, 2006 Ah Kee depicts his great grandfather, who was photographed by anthropologist Norman B Tindale as part of scientific studies of the genealogy of Australian Aboriginal people. Ah Kee revives the documentation of the relative he never knew with the intention of reinstating his grandfather’s humanity. The artist also adds the face of a new generation – his son – in a drawing redolent with persistence and hope for a future that will be different for Indigenous and white populations in their relations with each other.

Emily Kame Kngwarreye is one of the senior artists with works in My Country. Kngwarreye has now passed away but her work set a precedent for Australian Aboriginal women in remote locations in the creation of art that explored the application of traditional ideas and forms in conventional media that was new to Indigenous artists at the time. As with works by the artists in Five Māori Painters, in her paintings Kngwarreye has synthesised ancestral stories and historic cultural meanings with aspects of contemporary life. Kngwarreye described works such as Wild Potato Dreaming, 1990 as ‘containing the whole lot, everything’, recalling the worldview expressed by Robyn Kahukiwa. Kahukiwa’s art is imbued with the Māori belief that the past lies before us; the present day connects to the past.

A number of artworks in My Country can be thought of as political, in the ways that artists reflect on contemporary events or assume that art has a role to play in producing the world today. A final work is important to note in reflecting on the connectivity between viewer s and art in My Country and Five Māori Painters. Visitors to My Country leave the exhibition with their senses filled by Bindi Cole’s installation and video I forgive you, 2012. Cole, like several other artists in the exhibition, reflects on the apology that was made to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in 2008. Although Indigenous Australians continue to hope for ongoing change beyond this apology, which they feel has been slow to occur, Cole’s work asks the viewer to reflect on attitudes of forgiveness toward others at a personal level. Cole’s I forgive you generously reflects on the individual rights and responsibilities of pardoning others, a moving point on which to leave the intersections of these two exhibitions.

– Zara Stanhope, Principal Curator, Head of Programmes

Image credit:
Bindi Cole
Wathaurung people
Australia VIC b.1975
I forgive you 2012
Emu feathers on MDF board 11 pieces: 100 x 800cm (installed, approx.)
Purchased 2012. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation