Meet the archaeologist

Below is a fantastic interview by Roimata Maihi with archaeologist Barry Baquié who is currently working on the Auckland Art Gallery Development project.

"I had passed this wall so many times but today was different. I listened to Barry as he told a piece of history - the Albert Park Barracks. I gazed through the small square hole in the last section of remaining barracks wall, which is where a soldier would have stood with his weapon hidden from the enemy. I wondered what it may have been like and what else is left from this time.

I then realised what Barry really enjoyed: it wasn’t the fact that he was his own boss or that he could work out doors and travel everywhere, it was the actual thrill and excitement he gets every time he’s on an exploration. Pure adrenaline!

It has been 36 years since Barry first began his journey uncovering the past. It all began one day when he was a young lad needing to choose another subject for his university studies. He was tagging along with a group of archaeology students on a field trip down Waikato Heads who were inspecting old shell middens (thrown away rubbish) along the beach. It was puzzling at first but he came to realize that these were the indicators of how Maori survived along the coastline. This fascination led him to further his studies into anthropology and archaeology.

Barry is the Archaeologist for the Auckland Art Gallery Development project. During the earthwork stages, he has been monitoring very closely the diggers and their excavation work along the base of the Albert Park hill. There has been onsite an enormous excitement, expectation, and anticipation of finding the WWII tunnels under Albert Park. Unfortunately, we never saw any remains or tunnel entrances, but we did find a garden relating to the time when Albert Park was formerly Albert Barracks (see photo and map below).




Artifacts found on site have included bottles, newspapers, and ceramic pieces dating back to the 1850’s. Based on the hand-painted art work on one of the ceramic artifacts, Barry was able to estimate the making of the artifact to the 1830 – 1840 period (see photo below). A clock record book found in the building walls of the clock tower, had records dating back to 1933. Barry hopes to see some of these artifacts found during the construction period displayed in the new Gallery.

Barry reckons that to appreciate the present it helps to have a bit of an understanding of the past. He describes the process as the tip of the iceberg, where all that is visible is just a small reflection of our culture with the vast mass of our remains either destroyed forever or waiting to be excavated, explored, and interpreted. An archaeologist carefully carves to unveil what was ordinary, but now precious in its original state; hidden by time.

Gallery development update

This is the beginning of a series of posts to provide regular updates on the progress of the Auckland Art Gallery's development project. Keeping you up to date on what's happening and showing some images so you can actually see the progress. Please feel free to add comments at the end of this post.

East Gallery Restoration
Restoration and reinstallation of the lantern windows has commenced with arrival of the replacement window section from Canada. Moulds have been made for casting of the replica ornate fibrous plaster ceiling tiles.

Façade Restoration
Façade refurbishment continues with lead-work, copper and gutter restoration currently taking place to both the Wellesley & Kitchener Street buildings. Scaffold was installed to allow access to the top of the clock tower flagpole to replace the pulley and halyard. The clock faces and hands are also undergoing refurbishment.




Wellesley & Kitchener Building
Works are progressing on the internal refurbishment of the existing Wellesley & Kitchener Buildings. The seismic strengthening is completed and works are now underway installing the new services, wall and ceiling linings.

New sections of the building
In the new part of the building, completion of the topping concrete is underway and completion of the ground floor is targeted for mid September. The first of the window for Park-view façade have now arrived and are being installed.


Photos by Jennifer French

Crane Driver - a different view on the world

What is your name?
Charlie

What is your job?
I drive the large crane being used for the Auckland Art Gallery building project.




How long have you been a crane driver?
7 years

How did you become a crane driver?
Whilst I was in Australia, I did a crane driving ticket which took a week. In NZ you do 16 units which are NZQA. I’m not sure how long it takes. When you get your ticket you work on the ground first, this job is known as the Dogman. The Dogman uses hand signals to the driver as well as a 2-way radio to communicate with the crane driver above. The Dogman also ties the loads and ensures all is safe before lifting.



Are there any restrictions for being a crane driver?
No. If you can climb the crane and fit in the cab then you’re alright.

What is the age of retirement for a crane driver?
No age limit. I know a guy who is in his sixties and still climbing and driving cranes.

Where are your toilet facilities in the cab?
There are basic facilities in the crane cab but if you need a no.2 then you have to climb down! There is liquid sanitiser in the crane.

How many days of the week do you work on average?
Six days

How many hours of the week do you work on average?
55 hours

What is the name of the crane and who named it?
The gallery crane is a 355 Liebherr model crane, with a maximum carry load of 16Tonne.

The crane is affectionately called King Curtis and named by a local crane enthusiast

What is it like to drive the crane?
It is rewarding to see the results at completion.

What has been a highlight for you on this project?
Lifting in a 16Tonne panel for the lift pit.

What’s it like climbing the crane and how long does it take you?
If I am in a hurry I could climb it in 3 minutes and I know how fire fighters feel when they have to climb

How do you communicate with the rest of your crew on the ground?
Two way radio and hand signals.

Does the crane rock when you are up in the crane cab?
Yes.

What is the highest crane height you have been in?
150m

Describe the view? What can you see?
Albert Park, Wharf crane, bit of the ocean and it’s not unusual to see naked people walking around in their apartments!

What is up in the crane? TV/Music/Books/Fridge/Heater?
A CD player, a radio, a heater, no air conditioner.

How do you deal with isolation in the crane cab?
When there is a wait time or down time, I talk on the 2 way radio to the crew about anything and everything, tell jokes etc

Were you ever afraid of heights? Have you ever felt woozy?
Yes I was afraid of heights, but I have overcome it through being a crane driver after so many years. I have never felt woozy.

What is the most dangerous situation you have been in whilst driving the crane?
The most dangerous situation would have to be when I was at my maximum reach and the brake wouldn’t hold on a very windy day. We managed okay though. Windy days always prove difficult because of the surroundings, other buildings etc.

What is your favourite art work?
Charles Goldie’s artwork of the Maoris

Who is your favourite artist?
Charles Frederick Goldie
Leonardo Da Vinci – Mona Lisa

What is so special about being a Crane Drive?
When I’m not up in the crane cab, it’s great interacting with the subs on the ground. Good bunch, they have to be on good terms with a Crane Driver to facilitate prompt unloading.

Also, seeing the project complete, feeling a part of it and proud to share with others that you helped build it.

Lastly, the views from the crane, is another dimension.

Do you have any words for aspiring crane drivers?
Take your time learning the skills. Safety is a high priority. You must abide by what you can and cannot do. You must understand the capacity of loads, correct gears your working with. You must know how to safety load and tie. You must communicate all the time from load, lift to placing. One mistake and it could be fatal.

I really enjoy my job!

Image Credits:

Photos by Jennifer French

Back to the future

As most of you know, our main building is currently under development until 2011 as we are restoring, strengthening and building to improve the space and provide new public areas, integrating better with Albert Park and the surroundings.

We now have this fanstic animation, developed to show you a sense of what the building will look like when it reopens. Basically a virtual tour, into the future. Let me know what you think?

Forensics on fashion

It is not common for art writers to utilise fashion history in their discussion of paintings or sculpture, let alone photography. Locally, Wystan Curnow has been doing some interesting research into the history of the costume worn in Rita Angus’ now famous portrait of his mother, the late Betty Curnow.

Here are three unusual ambrotypes that I wish to date via their subject’s costume and their photographic style. ‘Ambros’ were mostly produced during the 1860s, when they had become cheaper versions of the daguerreotype process. Ambrotypes had already gained wide currency from the early 1870s but were superseded by tintypes and cartes-de-visite within a decade. Click here for my previous post on ambrotypes.

This ambrotype (above) is dated May 1877. As such, it is already a late instance of the medium. The photographer cleverly uses a low-angle, candid point-of-view which was already becoming common within wet-plate photography by the later 1870s. Dry-plate photography had been invented in 1871 and a photo’s exposure time was therefore much reduced. The camera here sits on a tripod ‘looking’ at this family group, all of which have been carefully arranged within the carriage. They are individually posed in order that they can all be seen clearly. Yet, their poses appear both natural and spontaneous. This is the work of an experienced ambrotypist as this was still a difficult medium to use out of doors.


Note how the man at left wears a bowler riding-hat. None of the men wear a top-frock coat; instead, they are all attired in morning coats. This probably means that they are members of the emergent middle class. Charles Dickens' favourite readers. The two boys wear dyed straw boater hats, always suitable for summer. The carriage’s banner sign shows that the cost of their excursion ‘To the Dyke and Back’ will cost one and six-pence.


This is a much wealthier group of land-owning men. Once they would have simply been called 'toffs' - smartly dressed men. Their black silk top hats, frock coats, lighter trousers are the uniform of the privileged during the mid-1860s. The figure fourth from the left has a figure-hugging, cloth country suit, which appears to be double-breasted. This is very dashing attire for this time.



What are these men doing together? They could be all be setting forth on a country outing to a sporting event where wearing such formal clothes was absolutely necessary. Their extensive whiskers were called muttonchops or dundrearies. Look at their mixture of hats – top hats, stovepipes, chimney pots. In addition, their decorative extras – fob watch, buttonhole flowers. Not the look of the ‘working-class’ at all.

These guys are what we would now call labourers. Practical men who work with their hands. The signage on the wagon’s tarpaulin, in the ambrotype above, reads ‘The Whitehead 72 Hoxton Street opposite the Britannia Theatre’. A London address. Partially obscured is the painted sign on the sides of this huge wagon that reads ‘By road haul’. What is already apparent is that these are the men who actually work with this wagon. See how their posture and demeanour says that they 'possess' the daily work of this wagon.


Three of them wear high bowlers, one a well-worn short top hat, the other a homburg style and the boy has a soft cap. To our eyes these blokes seem formally dressed but this dressiness was not at all unusual for the period – the mid-1860s. Men in the public transport arena still had to be hatted and coated. While also wearing a tie or buttoned up collar. Look at how relaxed they are. They may never have been photographed before. This is a 19th century equivalent of a snapshot in all its casualness.


An anonymous writer in The Quarterly Review for March 1847 commented: ‘The male costume is reduced to a mysterious combination of the inconvenient and the unpicturesque – hot in summer – cold in winter – stiff without being plain – bare without being simple – not durable, not becoming and not cheap….The hat is a machine to which an impartial stranger might impute a variety of culinary purposes, but would never dream of putting on his head.’

However, English costume between 1860 and 1880 was socially stratified and classified according to one’s position in society. A man or boy never thought of wearing anything outside their ‘station’. These three ambrotypes are very scarce outdoorsy instances of the Victorian hierarchy to personal appearance.


Image credits
Unknown photographer England active 1870s
Carriage excursion – To the Dyke and Back May 1877
ambrotype
61 x 74mm

Unknown photographer England active 1860s
Carriage excursion circa 1865
ambrotype
60 x 72mm

Unknown photographer England active 1870s
Wagon and workers circa 1870
ambrotype
58 x 70mm

Interpreting Rita

Rita Angus, Portrait of Betty Curnow, 1942
oil on canvas, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, purchased 1970
reproduced courtesy of the Rita Angus Estate

Rita Angus: Life & Vision opened with a flourish at the Auckland Art Gallery this weekend. We had huge numbers of people through the door showing just how popular this touring exhibition from Te Papa is.

After leaving on Friday from a packed media preview and a vibrant opening for the exhibition it was fantastic to come back on Monday morning to find these images from our Kids Club tutor, Kate Sellar. They show the children's responses to Rita Angus: Life & Vision, and in particular, Portrait of Betty Curnow from this weekends Kids Club workshop.

These were done by children ages 5 to 10 years of age, how amazing, I don't think I could have done a better job at capturing the character of the painting.






Rita Angus: Life & Vision
1 August - 1 November 2009
Auckland Art Gallery
FREE ENTRY



DEVELOPED AND TOURED BY

PRINCIPAL FUNDING PARTNER

MAJOR SPONSOR

Julian Dashper (1960-2009). Rest in Peace.

More than 15 minutes in New Zealand… As New Zealand’s folk icon Rita Angus is about to launch at the gallery tomorrow tonight there is a palpable echo of a much younger artist whose life has ended today. It’s hard to think of a New Zealand artist whose often lacerating and wicked humour understood better the constraints and strengths of working within this culture if not the landscape as Rita may have addressed it.

A collector of art’s history in all its popular, glorious, mythical force, Julian understood how an artist today stands in conversation with the past, for better or worse. In his case, these reference points were often courageous and solicitous of humour and an energetic spirit. His often quoted collection of over 60 books on Donald Judd and asides to Jackson Pollock’s bravado and stardom belied a healthy boy like desire to get to know the Greats from their attitudes to form. Of course this easy intervention with the world’s heroes, sat alongside his regular slapstick attack and eulogy of New Zealand’s own stars – in perhaps the most memorable rendition The Big Bang Theory, he imagines the atomic force of Rita Angus, Ralph Hotere, Colin McCahon, Don Driver, Toss Woollaston.

On a personal note, for a younger student of art history I readily admit being confused when first greeted by his gutsy abstract expressions of the 1980s, with their easy wit in dealing with the recent past – transgressive and at once joyous. It was a relief to have an artist like Julian demonstrate a confident tongue-in-cheek reference point to our own often anxious history, while at the same time adopting a language and mobility which enabled him to converse with like-minded artists, gallerists and curators internationally. I don’t know if there’s a student of Auckland University of Technology who wasn’t affected by Julian’s spirit – and the admiration which a talented generation of younger artists have for him is really unique.

Last but not least, Julian was not at ease with the institutions of art, and rightly so, maintaining a distance which was energising. Distance becomes us, and, in 1992 he inserted an exhibition-as-advertisement in Artforum magazine. Artfrom New Zealand comically defied the politics and constraints of the one-way conversation, and marked out the possibilities of the self made guy. JD: “The trick is to stay ‘in the zone’ when you get the idea and run with it.”

I think his early painting Young Nick’s Head from 1987 is one of my favourite Julian Dashper’s these days. It’s a disruptive painting with assembled pieces of fabric and photo. It’s a construction of sorts, which takes pieces of history and interrupts them with fabric and photo – so you never quite get it sorted. Art repeats and undoes itself pleasantly, and yet as Francis Pound wrote poignantly ‘The museum wants the artist timeless’. Julian knew how to work around conventions. And so, with hope, he demonstrated that life is not a convention or a closed bracket.

Alfred Burton - the man who makes likenesses

Writing about Alfred Burton’s photographs in The Wonderland Album reminded me just how significant his work is for the history of New Zealand’s photography. In May and June 1885, he undertook a challenging journey through the King Country.

This challenging trip ended up in Wanganui, then one of New Zealand's biggest towns. It resulted in 230 photographs. From these, Burton selected 150 unforgettable images that he printed as a sequence entitled The Māori at Home. He wrote and published an accompanying record of his expedition into this Māori area, which had been off limits to Pakeha for decades. His expedition’s account - Through the King Country with a Camera: A Photographer’s Diary - was published in the Otago Daily Times and is our first coupling of text and photography. He travelled with the surveyor C E Rochfort (1832-93), who was then attempting to plan the river steamer route on the Whanganui River. That may be Rochfort seated in the detail above.

The tangata whenua of the Whanganui River named Burton He Tangata Whakaāhua (the man who makes likenesses). Travelling as he did by waka (canoe) there was no opportunity to either develop or reshoot his glass-plate negatives. Burton arrived at Rānana (London) during the afternoon of Friday 8 May, a few hours after exposing this photograph near Moutoa, an island that had been the site of a battle between the Hauhau and the Ngati Hau people of Hiruhārama (Jerusalem). When you realise that Burton was the first photographer to create a photo-essay of this region, it is obvious that these are amongst the most important early photographs of New Zealand Māori.

image credit:

Alfred Burton (1834 – 1914)
Our Canoe and Crew, Rānana, Whanganui River 1885
gelatin silver print
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki
purchased 1999
1999/5/3

Camera shenanigans

I have been receiving positive feedback about my research into vernacular photography. This is encouraging, as a decade ago I met with negative responses to my ongoing study of everyday photography.

Here are some more views taken by an itinerant Scots visitor to New Zealand in 1928. This gutsy snapshooter had a natural photographic ability and a quirky affection for personal adventure. She was insistent with her friends and she recorded them using a very directorial approach. The people that she assembled for her images all became performers for her photographic ‘event’.

Here is Hanging Rock Creek. Have you ever encountered a more hilarious way to sit in a tree with your mother and aunt? Notice that they smile but he does not. He is clearly not yet related to her but obviously there is a romantic interest from her perspective.


These two Diamond Harbour snapshots are terrific. The young man previously perched in the tree is again shown at the centre of the shot, but he still remains totally deadpan and smileless. What should we call his bathing costume because it is obviously 'pre-togs'. A colleague called his gear 'pre-ORCA', which is specific and meaningful but not useful as a period descriptor. Swimming costume? Bathers? Probably made of blue serge wool which, when wet, would have felt like wearing knitted slime. An Australian friend told me that 'bathers' is the most accurate terminology.

Maybe this recurring man is actually the photographer’s local boyfriend. Other photographs in the album show that she was really keen on him. Were guys actually called ‘boyfriends’ in 1928? His Mum is again at the right hand side with her sister steadfastly at her right. Is this photographer always telling her subjects where to stand?



She certainly is being bossy in this image but with what a hazing humour. The figures are laid out like a Banks Peninsula version of Édouard Manet’s painting Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe. Look at how the woman cradles her head. It does not make any sense to ask why they are acting out these wacky poses because they are simply responding to what the photographer is requesting of them. Camera shenanigans.


An even more astonishing example of social buffoonery is the antics they get up to after lunch at Diamond Harbour when four of the picnic-ers go in for some rudimentary handstands. It puts playing up for the camera into perspective - make a fool of oneself and laugh along with the camera’s record. Such an amusing and self-deprecating touch to everyday photography is still charmingly uncommon. In 1928, it was positively rare.

The Wonderland Album – New Zealand Part 2

I searched Google for “Wonderland” and “New Zealand” and came up with 889,000 references. There is Boogie Wonderland, Geothermal Wonderland and even Pets Wonderland. Still, Wonderland is not a term that has retained its currency in New Zealand. Even though it is a terrific title for this 19th century photograph album.



Otira Gorge, West Coast Road (1999/18/74) is a spectacularly cold and wintertime view of one of the most accessible alpine passes in the South Island. Alfred Burton’s assistant looks very game wearing his shirtsleeves in such icy weather. Without his roadside presence it would be much harder to see the lofty scale of the distant mountains.


I reckon Burton's photograph of The Blue Bath, Rotorua (1999/18/150) is surreal and hilarious at the same moment. This pool looks so large but it is shown totally empty of bathers. Frequently, such late 19th century images of public pools included bathing figures - and they were always male - as a means of indicating the pool's scale. I like the abstraction of the composition and I reckon that the famous modernist architectural photographer Julius Shulman would be jealous of this shot!


Interior of crater, after eruption June 10 1886 (1999/18/177) is a brutally 'explosive' image. No one who has visited the top of the crater of Mount Tarawera ever fails to feel overwhelmed by how extensive the 1886 eruption was. I went there once in winter and it was like visiting the after-effects of a cataclysm By including the two ‘spectator’ figures, Burton affirms the old art tradition of having witnesses podering a sublime vista. Who would call the place they are looking at 'Wonderland'?

Image credits:

The Wonderland Album – New Zealand circa 1898-1899
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki
The Ilene and Laurence Dakin Bequest, purchased 1999
1999/18/1-184