Tag: art

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Shane Cotton: Moerewa — Liquid Sleep

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Shane Cotton: Moerewa — Liquid Sleep

Anthony Byrt

Auckland University Press

RRP $89.99

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Anthony Byrt’s new book “Shane Cotton: Moerewa — Liquid Sleep” is more than a biography of one of the country’s foremost artists. Byrt’s Northland whakapapa links him to that of the artist with his documentation and analysis of the artist’s life making the book more of a personal survey and discovery.

Byrt dispenses with the usual early biographical history of the artist (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Rangi, Ngāti Hine, Te Uri Taniwha) and his family, beginning the book when Cotton is an almost fully fledged artist.

He traces out the more than thirty years of the artist’s practice with Cotton developing an evolving visual language through which he has confronted his personal, tribal and national histories.

In this voyage into Te Tai Tokerau he deals with the relationships, landscapes and histories that are the basis of Cotton’s thinking and his art. We enter the world of Kororāreka and Hongi Hika, of mission stations and religious ideas which shaped Māori society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Byrt is skilful in providing insights and analysis which help us make sense of the paintings and the thinking of the artist.

He presents Cottons life through six chapters which hint at the artist as being some sort of latter-day prophet, dividing his life and work into six approaches – The Covenant, Mission Station, The First Book, The World Turned Over, White Hole and The Return.

He shows how Cotton has progressively mined the history and myth of Māori along with its intersection with European colonisation, with images that recall stories referencing historical and mythical figures, western and Māori knowledge as well as locations.

Byrt delves into the artist’s work showing the various influences, appropriations, inspirations and interests which have helped shape the artists’ works – artist such as Dick Frizzell and Gordon Walters and his diverse interests such as gaming and gang patches.

His early sepia-coloured paintings in which he linked landscape, symbols and history, Māori Folk Art, Op and Pop as well as Biblical texts explored his thinking about art and the early history of New Zealand.

Shane Cotton, Black Bird (Part I), 2005

Since then, his work has featured brightly coloured targets shapes, preserved heads dramatic cliffs and flower paintings, these works hinting at human and mythic histories.

More recently his works have connected with his living in Northland and revisiting some of his earlier work and the notions of colonialism and cultural exchange.

With his very recent work the artist could be seen as entering his Fauvist period with many of the paintings having the features of those early twentieth century artists who employed simplified shapes along with intense and juxtaposed colours.

Shane Cotton, Super Radiance, 2024

With works such as “Super Radiance” he has appropriated the Augusts Earle painting “Distant View of the Bay of Island”. Depicting a Māori with a taiaha who is acting as a guide through the landscapes of the North. These works connect with his (and the authors) living in Northland and revisiting some of his earlier work with the notions of colonialism and cultural exchange.

Shane Cotton, Things behind the Sun, 2021 (Left) Blue, Black Korona 2020 – 21 (Right)

There are several works of Cotton’s Toi Moko works where the tattooed and preserved Upoke Tuhtuhi Māori heads reference conflict, trade, and repatriations. The tattoo lines tracing out genealogy are linked to the notion of neural connections, knowledge links and computer networks.

Byrt writings about the artists’ iconography provide clarity and depth to our understanding of the artist’s work exploring how the artist adds many dimensions to our understanding to the art and our history.

The fully illustrated book provides an excellent visual history of the artist’s work with some double page spreads which all help in providing an appreciation of the artist’s work.

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Peter Boggs: Transfigured Realities

John Daly-Peoples

Peter Boggs, The Fountain

Peter Boggs

Peter Boggs who was born in New Zealand is one of the leading contemporary painters in Australia, with a career spanning over 50 years and 70 solo exhibitions. He trained at the Elam School of Fine Arts where one of his tutors was Colin McCahon. He taught at Mt Albert Grammar and had several exhibitions in New Zealand before moving to Australia.

 He has been an award-winning painter and is at home painting the mysteries of Italian Renaissance Gardens – most notably the Boboli Gardens in Florence, as well exploring the secret and forgotten aspects of the rural and urban landscapes. After coming across a strange empty room in a building in Italy in 2013, interiors began to dominate his interest – continuing to the present. Dreamscapes of remembered interior settings often only briefly seen and experienced, have become transfigured and re- imagined enigmatic spaces of stillness and silence

His paintings have been referred to as quiet works with a restrained magic and are subtle and dreamlike evoking deep moods, sensations, and atmospheres without relying on explicit storytelling or literal narratives. Rather than demand attention like some expressionist art, his pieces are described as quiet and seductive, drawing the viewer into a personal, deeply felt experience.

The spaces he paints seem entirely real yet slightly out of reach, forcing the viewer to engage intuitively rather than just visually. It is this bitter-sweet quality, where the known and that which is slightly eerie and edgy meet, that characterises many of Boggs’s paintings. Boggs can be an exquisite literal draughts man who can capture precise likenesses and surface textures, yet in his paintings he creates ‘memoryscapes’. All of the locations that he has painted he has visited, frequently on numerous occasions, and he knows them well, yet he recreates them from memory and reimagined.

Peter Boggs Shadowed Walkway

In the Boboli Gardens views and the alleys and streetscapes of Venice there is a quiet reverence for the painters Walter Sickert and John Singer Sargent. Paintings, including Shadowed walkway (Venice), is an examples of his strangely transfigured spaces, rich in their spiritual associations. All of his scenes are depopulated, rather than deserted. It is as if the human presence has been removed, perhaps only temporarily, although signs of habitation are omnipresent. It seems that at any moment, someone will appear from around the corner or walk down the alleyway, but for the moment all is still, tranquil and caught within a dream-like reality. The light is filtered, subdued and the tonal harmonies are beautifully balanced.

In a review of his interior paintings the reviewer Sasha Grishin wrote, “Many of his paintings deal with gardens, deserted landscapes and cityscapes and earlier were preoccupied with still life compositions. He had already been hinting at facades of buildings and looking into windows and open doorways. In this new body of work the focus is entirely on interiors of usually unspecified structures. They seem European, quite grand, possibly museums, but seen from odd angles with open curtains, windows and doorways exposing glimpses of the outside world.

Peter Boggs Reflections in an empty room

In his paintings nothing much happens, there is no dramatic narrative for us to engage with, but everything is charged with an inner tension where the anticipation is immense. There is so much that can happen, but nothing actually does. The viewer is provided with privileged access to these scenes, but there are relatively few clues provided as to what we are actually witnessing. We are invited to contemplate a passage of sunlight in the hallway, a painting hanging on the wall as a silent witness, a glimpse of a street through an open doorway or the play of shadows on the floor.

Boggs exploits two very deliberate artistic strategies in his work. The first is the use of a very subdued tonal palette, there are no screaming bright colours or sudden contrasts. The second is the total depopulation of the settings and the general sparseness. There is no movement and although there are signs of human habitation, there is no one present at the moment, and we are invited into the spaces in the manner of voyeurs. When there is no human presence, we tend to populate the space within our imagination, we invent narratives.”

Peter Boggs, Evening shadows,
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The Art of Terry Stringer

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

The Art of Terry Stringer

Edited by Linda Tyler

Massey University Press

RRP $90.00

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Terry Stringer has been a leading New Zealand sculptor and a key figure in the history of art in New Zealand. Working predominately in bronze, the majority of Stringer’s sculptures depict figures and still-life subjects. Many of his works reveal his interest in classical sculpture, Renaissance art, cubism and architecture along with mythology and literature.

It is these wide range of influences which are explored in a new book “The Art of Terry Stringer” which examines his life and work.

Along with a substantial introductory biographical essay by Linda Tyler, the book features essays by Peter Simpson, Mark Hutchins-Pond, Mark Stocker, Andrew Douglas and Robin Woodward, each focusing on different aspects of Stringer’s body of work. It is handsomely illustrated with photos of Stringer in his studio by Jane Ussher, and of the artist’s work by art photographer Haru Sameshima.

Terry Stringer. Arts Laureate Award, 2000. Bronze, 19.5cm. Haru Sameshima

It is a book that reveals the inspirations, the thinking, the processes, and the way he perceives his art within various environments ant the writers, photographers and designers have crafted a book which seems to have all the characteristics of the artist’s approach to creation.

Some of his major works can be seen at public sites throughout Aotearoa/New Zealand. These include The Risen Christ in Christchurch’s Cathedral Square (now in storage), Mountain Fountain, in the forecourt of Auckland’s Cathedral of the Holy Trinity and The World Grasped in Newmarket.

Terry Stringer. Being in Time 2021 AP. Courtesy of Milford Galleries. Photo Glenn Frei: Being in Time, 2021. Bronze, 220cm. Courtesy Milford Galleries, Dunedin and Queenstown, photograph by Glenn Frei

Stringer says of his approach to sculpture making, “For me, it has been a lifetime of pursuing one idea. I have to say that I am making the same sculpture over and over, and that it changes just a little each time, each piece of it being a new puzzle to solve. In the making of a work two contradictory ideas are clashed together — perhaps one subject transforms into another as the work is turned, or it might be that a figure that has been distorted for formal reasons needs to be brought to life.”

With many of the artists’ works he provides the viewer with multiple viewpoints, as Peter Simpson notes in his essay “The Intercut Image”. One of these sculptures “Gather ye Rosebuds” takes its title from the Robert Herrick poem and the work’s multiple images reference images from the poem – a young girls face, a blooming rose and a reaching hand.

The intercut images are not just a way of rewarding the viewer with changing perspectives we also see the artist exploring the nature of three-dimensional art.

Terry Stringer. Temple of Flora, 2004. Bronze, 254cm. Gil Hanly

The book has over one hundreds photographs by Jane Ussher and Haru Sameshima which feature many of the artists’ works as well as his studio and residences. The images of his studio are particularly revealing, Ussher has captured the artist at work in his current cavernous studio in Couldry St in Mt Eden as well as at the foundry where his works are made.

Zealandia, Mahurangi, by JASMAX Architects, 1998–2000. Simon Devitt

The photographs provide a visual record of the artist which sees the artist in the various stages of producing his work, revealing the almost magical steps in the creation of the artworks.

There is also a photographic essay on the evolution of a sculpture he was making of the painter Jacqueline Fahey. From initial sketches of the artist through the various stages of making the original clay figure, going to the foundry and the finishing processes.

He says of the process ‘Bronze sculpture-making has many stages. This sequence of images showing the evolution of a head of the painter Jacqueline Fahey starts with a drawing and then the clay work. From there it is plaster-moulded in my studio and wax is poured into it before it goes to the foundry. There it is prepared, re-moulded and baked out to create a ceramic shell for the bronze to be poured into. In this manufacturing process the artist starts the sequence and then decides the final presentation. Bronze-making is a story of life, death and rebirth over several episodes, until the work is finally realised.’

Of the photography by Jane Ussher several of which show Stringer in his studio he says “They have the atmosphere of old master paintings. And I had huge fun collaborating with Jane in staging still life groups that referenced various sources of inspiration.”

Terry Stringer Image Jane Ussher

Linda Tyler says of his work “His ideas for sculpture are typically quirky and engaging as well as beautifully executed, and while his works belong to different series, there are certain constants. For example, he communicates his sense of fun by encouraging viewers to move around each sculpture and make (sometimes startling) discoveries for themselves. I think that this derives from his love for Victorian ‘optical amusements’ such as folded pictures and puzzles where you see one image when you look in a certain direction, and something different when you look back the other way.”

Throughout his practice he has produced a number of figurative works which celebrate New Zealand artists with works depicting Charles Rose, Frank Sargeson, Frances Hodgkins, Kiri te Kanawa and Jacqueline Fahey.

Along with Tyler’s writings there are five essays by gallery directors, arts writers and university teachers – Andrew Douglas, Peter Simpson, Mark Stocker, Mark Hutchins-Pond and Robin Woodward. These writers investigate particular areas of nth artists work — his purpose-built residences / studios, the intercut images, the medals and maquettes and assemblages.

Stringer was awarded a Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council Scholarship four times – 1977, 1981, 1982 and 1986.  His contribution to New Zealand art was acknowledged in 2003, when he was the recipient of the country’s national honour, the ONZM (Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit).

Throughout his career Terry Stringer has exhibited extensively, with solo shows in Auckland, Sydney, Los Angeles and London. He is represented in major public collections, including the Auckland and Christchurch Art Galleries, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and the Alexander Turnbull Library.  

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Wellington artworks added to register of 20th Century Public Art

John Daly-Peoples

Matt Pine, Cone Piece. Whanganui War Memorial

Thirty-one Wellington artworks have recently been added to a national register of 20th Century Public Art which at present has more than 500 listed artworks.

Finding, researching, documenting, promoting, and where possible saving, Aotearoa New Zealand’s 20th Century public art is the mission of Public Art Heritage Aotearoa New Zealand (PAHANZ).

To this end the Wellington City Council supported PAHANZ in researching and listing a further 31 artworks from throughout Wellington City.

These works have now been added to the Trust’s website https://PublicArt.nz, an online register of artworks made, and installed in public space in New Zealand between 1900-1999.

Alongside the artworks, the website also provides biographies of artists, art collectives, and organisations associated with these works. With the Council’s support, 17 new artist biographies and associated organisations/people pages have been added.

Milan Mrkusich B J Ball 35 Graham St Auckland

Sue Elliott, co-director of PAHANZ said “many 20th Century public artworks have been destroyed, covered over, or simply lost. Others remain undocumented and at risk due to a lack of public knowledge of their significance and value. Our website is New Zealand’s first national register of these cultural treasures; launched with 380 works in mid-2023 and now grown to well over 500 works.

“Thanks to funding from Wellington City Council’s Public Art Panel, we have researched a further 31 works for uploading. These works were prioritised to reflect works that were at risk; those that were likely to gain category 1 or 2 significance from our independent assessment panel; and those that increased the diversity of artists already represented on the database,” she said.

The database can be searched by a number of factors including: the artwork, the artist, its location, date or medium.

The works that have just been uploaded include 24 works that are still publicly accessible, three works that are now in storage, and four destroyed/decommissioned works.

Neil Dawson, Ferns Civic Square , Wellington

The 31 Wellington works include works by public art heroes such as: Jim Allen; Doreen Blumhardt; Roy Cowan; Robyn Kahukiwa; Para Matchitt; Beverley Shore-Bennett; Michael Smithers; Toi Te Rito Maihi and many others. They can be found dotted about the city in: The CBD; Botanic Gardens; Te Ngākau Civic Square; Karori; Mt Victoria; Miramar; Thorndon and Newtown.

Co-director, Bronwyn Holloway-Smith said: “The uploading of these works in Wellington is particularly timely with the revitalisation of Te Ngākau Civic Square and soon to be re-opened Te Whare Wakarauika Wellington Town Hall, both of which are important sites of public art. Simultaneously, we’ve also submitted applications for Heritage New Zealand classifications for both the City-to-Sea Bridge and Harbour Plaza, and the Michael Fowler Centre with the important works contained within this building.

“By documenting, promoting, and seeking protections for Aotearoa New Zealand’s 20th Century public art we’re highlighting the value of these creative contributions to public space, and raising awareness about the stories they embody to ensure this important aspect of our culture is accessible to future generations of Kiwis.”

With over 500 works now listed on the register, PAHANZ still has much to do, with a further 1067 works to be researched that include accessible works alongside those that have been lost/hidden/destroyed, or whose current status is not confirmed. These include a further 89 works in the Wellington region that are awaiting auditing and listing.

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Michael Dell’s enigmatic landscapes at Föenander Gallery

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Michael Dell. Landscape at Moutere

Michael Dell. Every Time the Sun Comes Up

Föenander Gallery

Until September 15

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Michael Dells paintings hover between realism and abstraction, between the familiar and the obscure. Viewed as realist depictions the paintings have a mundane subject matter with view of trees, roads and distant hills but Dell gives them a mysterious quality with a misty perspective while the occasional road markings provide an enigmatic narrative.

When viewed as abstractions the artist highlights the ambiguity of the works by including two abstract works, Small Blue Field ($3200) and Small Purple Field ($3200). Here the ambiguity is accentuated by the titles of the works with the artists referencing both the aesthetic notion of ‘Colour Field’ as well as the landscape idea of the field in nature. Small Blue Field like looking into a darkened space or a dense nighttime scene while Light Grey / Blue Field is like looking at the sky or a misty scene

With largest of the works in the exhibition Landscape at Moutere ($26,500) the artist has managed to produce a work in which abstraction and realism almost coincide, the bands of road, field, trees, hills and sky seen as bands of abstract colour.

Michael Dell, Small Blue Field

A couple of works in the exhibition feature road markings leading the eye towards the distant bunching of trees, the only man-made intrusions. In Roadside Landscape 2 ($14,000) the median line curves to the right while Roadside Landscape   1 (($14,000) and Roadside Landscape   3 ($14,000) the median line directs the eye to the background trees.

Michael Dell. Roadside Landscape 3

With other landscapes such as Roadside Landscape 1 ($14,000) the sense of depth is created with some hazy tree branches in the foreground. Dell employs several of the traditional techniques used by landscape painters to give a sense of depth. In some of the works, bands of light cross the roadway creating a sense of depth while in other works it is the colour transition across open ground which creates the depth.

Adding to the Realism / Abstraction ambiguity Dell has employed a technique that suggests that paint has been wiped from the surface of the paintings or that a film has been applied to the surface. This denial of the authenticity of the painted surface heightens the ambiguity of his paintings.

Dell’s paintings explore the nature of light the way they define objects, create space and mood. With works like Velvet Morning ($18,000) the artist seems to have captured both the intense areas of light as well as the dense concentrations of darkness and shadow.

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South Island Māori Rock Art

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

South Island Māori Rock Art: European interest from the 19th century to the present

Philippa F Graham

Canterbury Museum

RRP $89.99

Publication Date. September 1

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Rock drawings are one of the oldest forms of art with numerous examples throughout the world. There are also many examples in both the North Island and South Island which have been well documented.

A new publication, South Island Māori Rock Art by Philippa Graham looks at the rock art from some of the South Island sites with numerous maps and photographs and graphic depictions of the artworks which were generally painted onto limestone.

The pale, fine textured limestone provided an ideal surface to draw on with artists using the closest material to hand. The black colour was usually charcoal (burnt stick from fires) while the red colour would have been made from Kokowai (red oxide of iron) mixed with bird or fish oil.  Where there is no limestone, the drawings would have been incised on the smooth surface of grey-wacke rock.

J L Elmore Drawings at Albury Park (Tengawai Gorge)

That the drawings were made with fugitive materials on perishable surfaces it is a wonder that they have lasted so long, exposed to all types of weather. 

The South Island Māori rock drawings, dating back to early Māori occupation, were initially seen as scientific curiosities by many early European explorers and later, museum curators, including Julius von Haast, Alexander Hamilton, Robert
Speight, and H.D. Skinner.

Early on there was the debate in European circles about the artistic merits of the rock drawings, and their value to both local and international collectors. Experts such as Dr. J.L. Elmore a visiting American anthropologist and antiquarian collector documented, controversially damaged and removed portions of Māori rock art from sites in the South Island around 1916 encouraged by a few museum curators.

The scale of the paintings was minimal at some sites while at others they are quite extensive. The ornithologist and botanist W R B Oliver noted that at Weka Pass a portion of the paintings were 66 feet (20m) long with about 80 figures between two and three feet in height.

In the mid twentieth century, the different approaches to the works can be seen in the contrasting attitudes of archaeologist Roger Duff and artist Theo Schoon. Duff was initially dismissive of the rock art seeing the works as “doodles”. Theo Schooh however saw the drawing as having greater aesthetic and spiritual significance.


The book is the culmination of many years of exploring and checking the sites by local farmer Philippa Graham, encouraged by landowners, field staff from the
Department of Lands and Survey and the New Zealand Historic Places Trust.

There has been little written about the history of these rock art sites since Michael Trotter and Beverley McCulloch’s 1971 publication, Prehistoric Rock Art of New Zealand and now with South Island Māori Rock Art, Graham calls on her in-depth research at all of the major New Zealand institutions, in addition to the Thomas Burke Museum, Seattle. She has uncovered fresh material about the sites, the landowners, the governments of the times, archaeologists’ contributions, museums’ involvement, library records and attitudes towards local Māori in early days.

European Sailing Ship, Takiroa Shelter, North Otago

The nameless artists who first daubed charcoal and red ochre on these walls depicted subjects which were generally close to home. The images range from abstract forms, to bird, animal life and people. The presence of bones from moa and the extinct quail suggest that the people who made these images started early in terms of human habitation in the area. There may have been a long break in continuity, as there are also depictions of European sailing ships and animals suggesting that the practice may have been revived in the late eighteenth or early ninetieth century.

The book details the efforts to preserve and record the drawings at various sites. Among these efforts were the overpainting of works at Weka Pass by the and Thomas Herberley and the more recent drawings by Theo Schoon and Tony Fomision.

The book has more than 350 illustrations and maps, an index and a Māori glossary, as well as a chapter focusing on New Zealand artists who have been inspired by the rock drawings. In producing these images, the artists have often produced more refined images and in the case of the New Zealand postage stamps have brought these images to the wider public.

Matariki Stamps 2012 Designer Dane Burke & advisor Brian Allingham and Nga Tahu Māori Rock Art Trust

The artists who have used the imagery include James Turkington, Cliff Whiting, Selwyn Muru, John Bevan Ford, Tony Fomison, Rua Pick, Theo Schoon, Denis Knight Turner and Gordon Walters.

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John Pule at Gow Langsford

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

John Pule. The first incision I saw I dreamt no more

John Pule

The first incision I saw I dreamt no more

Gow Langsford, Onehunga

Until September 5

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

The catalogue to John Pule’s latest exhibition “The first incision I saw I dreamt no more” has an introductory poem / note by the artist about the exhibition

“my poetry comes from soil

The exertion of ants, the mucus of worms

The last evenings of caterpillars

The froth of centipedes”

It is an acknowledgment that the art works are based on natural forms and his incisions or enquires into the natural world with works such as the eponymous work on paper is like a page from a scientific notebook with drawings of natural forms, the flora and fauna of the artists environment – fish, plants, insects and centipedes. Theses drawings can also be seen as microscopic views and diagrams of biologicals structures.

These references to the natural world and the plant forms that provide shelter also hint at a parallel world of mythological creatures and lands.

Johnh Pule. Tau Po Haaku Tau Aho Haaku

His dramatic approach can be seen in works like “Tau Po Haaku Tau Aho Haaku” ($95,000) where the plant forms which dominate are based on local vegetation but on a larger scale become like a mythological wonderland – somewhere between fantasy and microscopicscans of cellular forms. There are also reference to the natural world with a lake in “Are we able to live here” ($95,000) or a group of Lilliputian scale group of people in “We will always begin here” ($95,000).

The artists work draws on the physical, topographic and historic, merging them, with social, political and personal insights and visions. The work contains much of the artists previous iconography but have a greater immediacy given the artists recent responses to in his ancestral land.

The works are in a sense both a discovery and rediscovery of the land and its mythologies as well as the artists own journeys.

Of his time spent in Niue producing these works he says “I rode my bike each day through the canopy forest from Liku to Alofi, through rain or shine, winds, storm, or calm. The road is bordered with plantations, forests, tracks into the interior. Big blue skies and clouds, shadows of trees stretch across the makatea (limestone) road. Returning to Liku every evening, the sun is warm on my back.  These paintings and drawings are about that particular time.”

His works have previously dealt with his growing up in New Zealand, his discovery of traditional Niuean art, and developing his own iconography. This had led to him dealing with wider issues of colonialism, the impact of Christianity as well as the mythology and spirituality of Niue.

With several of the works in the exhibition the artist has created pathways which reach into the foliage much like the trails that that the artist has ridden on his bike but also the pathways which reach back in time. These pathways and journeys can also be seen as metaphors for the artist’s own physical, spiritual and aesthetic journeys.

They are analogous to the songlines of aboriginal art as well as the lines of musical compositions, imagining the way the sounds evolve, carrying a narrative expressing joy. sorrow and wonderment.

The foliage depicted is at once colourful and local as well as surreal and mythological – a portrayal of Pule’s Niue as well as an imagined paradise.

John Pule. Niu Tilani, Takanoa Okalana

Other works such as “We are waiting for them” ($28,000) “Niu Tilani, Takanoa Okalana” ($28,000) feature plans, grids and designs – locating islands, stars, measuring winds and sea currents, all ways of comprehending the environment

David Eggleton provides an essay to the show which provides an overview of the artist’s work with insights into the artist’s work and perceptive observations such as –

“The paintings are transformative in their poetic intensity, maintained by the deft juxtaposition of various intense hues, which, like lava flows, have pooled and puckered into glossy skeins and skins – the oil-based enamels slathered on in virtuoso fashion, or worked around with brush and pen and rag. Here, in these dense, mirage-like gardens, the shining plants have taken on the powers of sorcery or enchantment. They are part of a fantastic botanical order, not necessarily benign, that over-arches the anonymous, small-scale human figures depicted. And we too as spectators bearing witness are enfolded, or perhaps embraced, by the forking tree limbs, the fleshy leaves, the many-seeded climbing vines.”

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The Royal New Zealand Ballet’s stylish Winter Season

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoplea

Birthday Offering – Mayu Tanigaito and Laurynas Vejalis Image: Stephen A’Court

Royal New Zealand Ballet

Winter Season

Aotea Centre

July 23 – 25.

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples.

The Royal New Zealand Ballet’s Winter Season featured a triple bill featuring and two contemporary ballets, and the premiere of Sir Frederick Ashton’s more classical, Birthday Offering.

Ashton was the principal architect of the “English style” of classical ballet and choreographed Birthday Offering in 1956 for The Royal Ballet’s 25th anniversary, Birthday Offering. The ballet was originally a tribute to fourteen of its premiere dancers which included New Zealand ballet legend Dame Rowena Jackson along with Dame Margot Fonteyn.

Danced to Alexander Glazunov’s waltzing music the work demands perfection and precision and that is what the dancers delivered.

The seven female dancers each danced sequences which displayed their various talents and took inspiration from the Glazunov score. One of the dancers performed like a clockwork Coppelia, another gave a display of gentle, relaxed limbs while another presented a more romantic approach.

The seven dancers handled all the intricacies of the dance with a calm serenity, all using their body, arms and legs expressively.

Their displays presented what amounted to a primer of modern classical dance which they performed with technical virtuosity and panache.

When the female dancers partnered with their male partners both dancers became more animated and expressive but there was not the engaging emotionalism one might have seen later– not the sort of dancing seen between Fonteyn and Nureyev

There were some stylish vignettes, there was elegance and beauty, but it was too formal with a lack of heart.

This was simple ballet staged cleanly and stylishly in colourful mid-length gowns (Kenneth Rowell) that bounced along to the spritely footwork.

Ultra Folly – Jemima Scott and Kirby Selchow Image: Stephen A’Court

Sarah Foster-Sproull’s Ultra Folly opened with the dancers appearing to communicate with each other using their own form of semaphore in a homage to the choreographer Crystal Pite. Then, dancing to La Folie, music from the seventeenth century but played by Jordi Savilo and Hyperion XXI, they displayed a range of engaging dance routines with sharp moves and gesturers, mirroring the music and exploring the notion of communication.

Their dancing took inspiration from a range of sources varying from the courtly dance of the seventieth century to Highland dance while at other times their dancing evolved from the chance encounter on the street to the meeting of two lovers.

Then there were the more elaborate group interactions, the dancers appearing create hieroglyphics or an elaborate signing system and they became bound up in their intricate dance movements.

The almost tactile music was reflected in the dance at times as it morphed from the mechanical to the sensual.

Stand to Reason Image: Stephen A’Court

South African Andrea Schermoly’s Stand to Reason which was the more political of the three works took inspiration from the pamphlet “Ten Reasons Why A Woman Should Vote” written by Kate Shephard in 1888 in which women had to clearly convince, explain and justify their right to political participation.

The text of the pamphlet was projected onto a screen behind the all-female dance ensemble who were dressed in black tunics which referenced the women of Sparta, or the Amazons as well as a nod to the various black clad New Zealand sports teams.

The notion of the strong woman was also highlighted in the way that the dancers confronted the audience often fixed their gaze on us.

The dancers performed the roles of support and impetus normally taken by male dancers and while much of their movements had an aggressive quality with great physicality this was tempered by more subtle gestures.

In the final sequence of the work danced to the music of Beethoven the intensity of the dancing increased as the volume of the music increased with raw energy, breast beating and frenetic dancing. The dancers seemed to be struggling against unseen forces as they broke the bonds restraining them just as the sound system seemed close to imploding.

While the music by Johann Paul von Westhoff, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Marin Marais, drove the work, the choice of male composers seemed at odds with the feminist nature of the work.

In two of the works the lighting played a significant part with the surreal lighting of Daniel Wilson in Ultra Folly and the minimalist approach by Andrew Lees in Stand to Reason.

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Reviews, News and Commentary

et al. the fundamental practice coming to the Auckland Art Gallery

et al Installation view: 51st Venice Biennale, 2005. Image credit: et al., the fundamental practice, 2005. Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, purchased with support of the Patrons of the Auckland Art Gallery, 2008. Photograph by Jennifer French.

John Daly-Peoples

et al. the fundamental practice

Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki

Opening 8 August 2026.

Next month the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki will present et al.’s major installation “the fundamental practice” from 8 August 2026, marking the first time the work has been displayed in its entirety in Aotearoa New Zealand.

First exhibited as New Zealand’s official presentation at the 2005 Venice Biennale, the multisensory installation combines five moving ‘autonomous systems’ with computer-generated voices and sounds in a dystopian orchestra. The work forms a layered exploration of belief systems, extremism and its influence on individual freedom and collective life.

Tātaki Auckland Unlimited Director of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Dr Zara Stanhope says the exhibition provides visitors the opportunity to experience a major work in New Zealand contemporary art history. “the fundamental practice is one of the Gallery’s most significant large-scale collection works. While it became the focus of significant public debate when it was first presented at Venice, many New Zealanders have never had the opportunity to see the work in person, and experience the way it raises curiosity about the ways we understand the world that we live in.”

The artists et al. say the work raises questions about how we navigate the ongoing and intensifying stream of information and media that shapes our lives today: “Can we as humanity endeavor to establish a point of equanimity within the diverse and often oppositional streams of thought we encounter on a daily basis?” and in this landscape, “What truths provide fulfilling meanings to us as a global collective?”

Auckland Art Gallery Senior Curator, Global Contemporary Art Natasha Conland, who curated the work’s original presentation at the Venice Biennale, says the fundamental practice feels more relevant today than it did when it was first shown twenty years ago. New Zealand’s 2005 Venice Biennale presentation to be shown in Aotearoa for the first time

“The work resonates today in a world shaped by widening social divisions, rapidly changing technologies and increasingly fixed belief systems. In this context, the fundamental practice shares diverse perspectives and potential futures, set amongst outmoded machinery. Far from pessimistic, the experience of the work is in many ways speculative and poetic.”

Et al. is among Aotearoa New Zealand’s most celebrated installation artists. Winner of New Zealand’s leading contemporary art award, the 2004 Walters Prize, et al. was the focus of a major retrospective in Melbourne in 2024 and is one of only two New Zealand artists to have exhibited at Art Basel’s prestigious Art Unlimited. The pseudonym “et al.”, meaning “and others”, was adopted in 2000 to acknowledge a range of collaborators and to challenge conventional ideas of  authorship and artistic identity.

A 2005 National Business Review of the et installation will be published shortly at http://www.nzartsreview.org

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Reviews, News and Commentary

The surreal settings of Jeffrey Harris

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Jeffrey Harris, Diary of a Stranger

Jeffrey Harris

Suite Gallery

April 28 – May 30

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Jeffrey Harris creates surreal environments and portraits where Christian iconography and the mundane create richly textured imagery. Scenes which may derive from personal experience become images of universal importance reflecting on sexuality, personal and spiritual relationships.

In his latest exhibition of new paintings at Suite Gallery Harris draws on a range of sources including artists of the Trecento such as Giotto and Colin McCahon. His cartoon-like approach to his subjects and the Christian imagery create a unique view of the social, psychological, and spiritual dilemmas of society.

His use of Christian symbolism, is similar to the way McCahon had approached religion and its iconography, imagining the life of Christ in a contemporary world, in a contemporary setting.

Jeffrey Harris, Hovering Angel over Stony Bay

This mix of landscape, symbolism and religious iconography is seen at its most obvious in “Hovering Angel over Stony Bay” ($75,000) where the angel represents spiritual presence, protection, and the intersection of heaven and earth. There is also a swimming pool / cattle water trough referencing Christs baptism, the baptismal font and the water of life.

A crucifixion scene set in the centre of the painting appears to be located at a precise position, indicated by a precise line bisecting the image.

Jeffrey Harris, Journeys 1975 – 2026

The four vignettes in his “Journeys 1975 – 2026” ($95,000) owe much to surrealist artists such as de Chirico and Magritte. Each of the images composed of simple figures and objects which have populated much of the artist’s work. The elongated nude figures which allude the nude figure if Christ can probably also be read as a disenchanted, disillusioned Harris while many of the other figures – men with hats can be seen as bureaucrats or individual searching for the truth.

In these views of Harris’s world we are confronted figures who look back at us, questioning and querying. The objects in these paintings are at once recognisable and mysterious. The cloud in one can be linked to the early Christian mystical book “The Cloud of Unknowing” with its obscure attempts to the link the attaining of spiritual through mediation on the world rather than through enquiry.

In other works there are also strange symbols or sections of the Cross floating the air as well as a lone figure exhorting a group of people. These figures often found in his work confront the viewer but offer no lesson or reaction.

Throughout his works he depicts small objects, some instantly recognisable, other slightly obscure. They are like those images found in Renaissance painting, ordinary objects which have been chosen to convey the sitter’s wealth, status, piety, or intellect, functioning as a symbolic language rather than mere decoration. These symbols – an airplane, a book, various birds, black cats, a hot air balloon and a human head with horns give the paintings a sense of density and depth as well as the enigmatic.

The plane could be a reference to a series of McCahon works “Jet over Muriwai” which are a clever image connecting Māori and Christian / European notions of afterlife and isolation while the images of birds convey the idea of a free spirit as well as highlighting the balance between nature and divine narratives.

Jeffrey Harris, Crucifixion and Landscape

With “Crucifixion and Landscape” ($70,000) the artist places the event in an undefined location, although the hills could refer to the Southern Alps. The work like many artists of the last 100 years tries to place the Christian narrative in contemporary settings with the Christ figure symbolising the suffering and pain of individuals in contemporary society. In using Christian imagery Harris creates ambivalent narratives. While the Bible stories are about God/Christ, Harris uses them as symbols of human suffering, addressing issues of personal spirituality and angst.

Jeffrey Harris, Wedding 1975 – 2026

With “Wedding 1975 – 2026” ($70,000) the artist has depicted a wedding party, but as with all his “secular” images there is a tension and unease with the wedding group most of whom are looking to the right beyond the picture frame. Knowing Harris’s liking of religion subjects this could well be a depiction of the wedding at Cana, and the group are watching Christ performing his miracle of turning water into wine.

With these painting the artist endeavours to create narratives combining biblical tales, recreated myths, dream sequences and psychological insights.