The Lula Washington Dance Theatre is a contemporary modern dance company in Los Angeles which has performed across the United States and toured internationally. It was established forty years ago when Lula Washington realised there were few black dance institutions in America .
They have a stylish approach to contemporary dance incorporating elements of African and Caribbean dance as well as contemporary modern dance and ballet. All these elements were seen in the opening number where three dancers – Love, Faith and Hope, performed to heavy beats, foot stomping and clapping with the audience encouraged to add to the heavy clapping to that of the dancers and he riotous drumming morphed from African beats to something closer to hip hop.
Three female dancers were joined by male dancers who became intertwined and there was a sense of the dancers and audience all part of a church service, street performance or gym workout.
Accompanying the hectic dancing were references to American segregation, slavery, lynchings and race riots – Charleston, Springfield, Watts and an image of George Floyd
Accompanying this dancing was some relentless drumming with and intense energy more akin to that of a night club and each of the sequences was given multiple bursts of applause from the audience.
Throughout this sequence the woman danced like ghost or departed spirits, their dancing a combination of celebration and remembrance of the African roots of the movements and music.
Because of the emphasis on these aspects the dances all seemed to be something of a political force and the dancers’ political activists.
In a later sequence one of the dancers shouts out the repeated chant “America is killing me” and this was accompanied by a visceral scream, a dramatic event one would not encounter in a Royal New Zealand Ballet performance and shows the level of the political urgency behind the Lula Washington project.
There was an intensity to many of the dances with a physically close to that of a Whirling Dervish. But alongside this there were elements of playfulness and whimsy which were all performed with a finesse close to that of classical ballet dancers.
The political or polemical aspects of the dances often felt to be less satisfying of the performance without a dance vocabulary which did not express the angst and anger which was conveyed in the words which accompanied the dance.
The Sri Lankan Civil War of the latter part of the 20th century provides the backdrop for Ahklan Karunaharan’s “A Mixtape for Maladies” which explores the lives of a Tamil family, who are caught up in the conflict, some of whom are killed or immigrate to New Zealand.
The play explores the reality of living in a different time and culture in a period of tension and transition and we identify and sympathize with the family’s trials of living through a war.
I was jolted back to another reality at the end of the show however. My Uber driver looked South Asian, so I mentioned about the show and how it combined politics and family. He was from Sri Lanka and acknowledged the tragedy of the war and its impact on the country. But his experience was very different from the family I had just witnessed on stage as he had been an air force pilot during the war contributing to the death and destruction, providing an alternative history of the period
One of the few things that Sangeetha (Ambicka G.K.R.) one of the daughters has brought to New Zealand was a tape recording of songs she loved growing up. Her New Zealand born son, Deepan (Shaan Kesha) finds the tape and plays the songs during his online podcast which trigger personal and political memories for her.
Through the course of the play Deepan plays these songs and Sangeetha remembers elements of the family’s life – hearing about the war, her and her sister hanging around the store where Anton (Bala Murali) works because he plays all the latest local and international songs as well as songs from the movies.
While some of the songs are played on the tape recorder others are sung by various members of the cast, accompanied by a duo (Ben Fernandez and Seyorn Arunagirinathan) playing a variety of instruments – keyboard, Carnatic violin and flute. Ahilan Karunaharan (Rajan), and Bala Murali give particularly fine vocal performances while Tiahli Martyn’s (Subbalaxmi) display of Tamil dance was skillful. These vocal and dance performances had many of the Tamil audience singing and swaying along to the music.
Among the tunes were Doris Day singing” Que Sera Sera”. “La Bamba” and some Tamil songs. These songs act as a cultural glue which holds the family together but also reminds us that these songs had universal appeal listened to by Sri Lankans as well as New Zealanders at the time.
The play is a mixture of social history, family exploration, cabaret and personal journey with music playing a central role in the play as well as the instruments the family would have listened to the songs on – an old turntable, a hi-fi player and the tape recorder.
The simple set features Dareen and Sangeetha in his podcast studio on one side and musicians on the other, flanking the family home and Anton’s general store.
The exploration by Dareen is initially an innocent enquiry into his mother’s music choices but becomes a journey into Sri Lanka’s history as well as triggering memories of his mothers and her family’s past and the impact of the war on their lives.
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Claude Monet, French, 1840-1926; Water Lilies ; about 1922;oil on canvas Toledo Museum of Art, purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey
A Century of Modern Art
Auckland Art Gallery
June 7 – September 28
John Daly-Peoples
Auckland Art Gallery has announced that the exhibition “A Century of Modern Art” will be its special winter exhibition this year, running from June & through till September 28th.
The exhibition will be on loan from the Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio, and will provide a survey of the major artists who transformed modern art.
The exhibition will consist of 57 works by 53 artists, including Paul Cezanne, Edgar Degas, Helen Frankenthaler, Édouard Manet, William Merritt Chase, Amedeo Modigliani, Berthe Morisot, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Camille Pissarro, Robert Rauschenberg, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Vincent van Gogh, James McNeill Whistler, among others.
Director of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Kirsten Lacy says the calibre of works and artists in this collection is exceptional and not to be missed. “A Century of Modern Art showcases the diversity and innovation that defined modern art movements,” says Lacy. “From the emotive brushstrokes of Van Gogh to the evocative landscapes of Monet and Rauschenberg’s bold abstractions, these works not only revolutionised Western art history but continue to inspire new generations.”
“The exhibition includes works by legendary art figures, including Vincent van Gogh, whose work hasn’t been publicly displayed here in Aotearoa in over a decade. It is made available to us due to renovations that are taking place at Toledo Museum of Art, and we are honoured to be working with the Museum to make the most of this rare opportunity.”
The centrepiece of the show will be Claude Monet’s “Water Lilies” Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey Plants, water, and sky seem to merge in Claude Monet’s evocative painting of his lily pond at Giverny. The disorienting reflections, bold brushstrokes, and lack of horizon line or spatial depth make Water Lilies appear almost abstract. Painted about 1922, it belongs to a grand project that Monet had conceived as far back as 1897:
“Imagine a circular room whose wall . . . would be entirely filled by a horizon of water spotted with [water lilies]… the calm and silence of the still water reflecting the flowering display; the tones are vague, deliciously nuanced, as delicate as a dream.”
Monet began this ambitious project in 1914, finally completing it shortly before his death in 1926. Over those years he executed more than 60 paintings of his water garden, capturing the light conditions at different times of day and in different weather. Twenty-two of these large panels were installed in the Orangerie in the Tuileries Gardens, Paris, as a gift to France. The Toledo’s work was is possibly a study for one of the three panels of the Orangerie composition” Morning”.
Berthe Morisot, In the Garden at Maurecourt. (Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey)
Included in the exhibition is a work by artists Berthe Morisot one of the few female Impressionist artists. Her work “In the Garden at Maurecourt” (Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey) is set in Morisot’s sister Edma country house outside Paris and probably shows Morisot’s daughter, Julie, and one of Edma’s daughters.
She was born to an upper-middle class family and was the great-niece of Rococo artist Jean-Honoré Fragonard. Morisot rejected the social expectations of her class and gender by pursuing a professional career as an artist. In 1868 she met and became close friends with artist Édouard Manet, marrying his younger brother Eugène in 1874, the same year she participated in the first Impressionist group exhibition.
Paul Gauguin, French, 1848-1903; Street in Tahiti; 1891;oil on canvas (Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey)
There is also a work by the recently deemed “controversial” Paul Gauguin. His work “Street in Tahiti” (Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey) which predates his Tahitian figurative works was among the first group of paintings Gauguin produced in Tahiti during his initial two-year stay. He conveyed something of the special character of the place—the limpid light, rich colour, lush vegetation, and lofty mountains—through his use of strong contours, flattened shapes, repeated curving rhythms, and tautly patterned brushstrokes. However, minor notes of strain, such as the brooding woman and heavy clouds pressing down from above, introduce undertones of sadness and disquiet.
A Century of Modern Art will make use of its current major exhibition “The Robertson Gift: Paths through Modernity” which includes works by. Georges Braque, Paul Cezanne, Fernand Léger, Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian and Pablo Picasso.
Together the two exhibitions will trace out the birth of modern painting, beginning with the Impressionists in the 1860s, and follows its evolution through key movements such as Post- Impressionism, Symbolism, Cubism, Surrealism, Constructivism, German Expressionism, Bauhaus, De Stijl, Precisionism, and Colour Field Painting and Abstract Expressionism.
Adam Levine, the Edward Drummond and Florence Scott Libbey President, Director and CEO of the Toledo Museum of Art, says, “The Toledo Museum of Art is distinguished by the quality of its collection. Each acquisition in our institution’s history has been oriented to acquiring artworks of superlative aesthetic merit. Never have so many of our masterworks travelled together, and we could not be more excited for them to debut in Auckland.”
A Century of Modern Art is organised by the Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio and has been supported by HSBC and Auckland Art Gallery Foundation. Co-ordinating curator of the exhibition is Dr Sophie Matthiesson
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Martin Creed, Work No 3769, Work No 3764, Work No 2053
Three exhibitions K Rd – Palmer, Creed, Parekōwhai.
Stanley Palmer, New Work
Melanie Roger Gallery
Until February 22
Martin Creed, Like Favourite Socks in a Drawer
Michael Lett
Until March 1
Michael Parekōwhai, The Indefinite Article
Artspace Aotearoa
Until April 17
Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
Current exhibitions along Karangahape Rd offers a range of art works from the realist depictions of the landscape to abstract paintings and conceptual construction.
With his latest exhibition at Melanie Roger Gallery Stanley Palmer continues his depictions of the New Zealand landscape. Like many of his previous exhibition he has painted views of the New Zealand coastline featuring dramatic vistas of headlands and offshore islands.
With this new series of works he has revisited many of his previous subjects including depictions of Karamea, Great Barrier Island, Chathams, Great Mercury Island and Matauiri. While these are mainly landscape there are a few which also feature other element in the landscape which add a visual drama as in “Akiaki – Chathams” ($30,000) where he has included windswept trees and grazing sheep.
Stanley Palmer, “Akiaki – Chathams”
These paintings seem to be less detailed than some of his previous work and there is a simplicity which gives these works an added drama. Part of this drama comes from the artists shrewd use of paint, so that in “Awana- Aotea Great Barrier” ($22,000) the eroded cliffs are highlighted by the gash of earthy colours and in “Mataurui” ($28,000) the red line of a track is like an abstract slash through the landscape.
Stanley Palmer “Mataurui”
In most of the works the background of sea meeting sky shows a clever juxtaposition of shimmering abstract blues with subtle variations between each of the paintings
Also included in the exhibition are some of the artist’s earlier bamboo prints of the early 1970’s including “Hillside Town Kohukohu” ($2250).
Stanley Palmer “Hillside Town Kohukohu”
Martin Creed’s minimalist works have always played with the definition of art and art making starting with his Turner winning installation “Work No. 227: The lights going on and off: an empty room” in which the gallery lights switched on and off at 5-second intervals.
His work is a mixture of the witty, poetic and philosophical, making use of a range of everyday materials and approaches which challenge traditional views of art.
His current show “Like Favourite Socks in a Drawer” brings together elements of chance, time and structure with a series of ziggurat shaped works. The works started with his decision to buy an ordinary multi pack of commercial paint brushes.
Martin Creed, Work No 3764
With these he applied paint in different colours with the varying brush sizes, stacking the colours one above the other to create stepped, random bands of colour.
The paintings/designs can be seen as referencing the ziggurat forms of ancient Mesopotamia and Mexico as well as more recent brutalist constructions and has connections with Rewi Thompson’s block-like house in Kohimarama. There are also hints of Frank Stella, Donald Judd and Cuisenaire rods.
Creed says of the works “A step pyramid is solid and easy to understand. It is a safe structure that is not going to fall down. It is trustworthy. You can see how it is built. The steps are hopefully leading to the top, and you can enjoy the colours on the way up. In a blobby, soupy, ill-defined world it can be helpful to put your ducks in a row.”
The works have a sense of the structure to them with their build-up of coloured shapes and in works such as “Work No 3764” (USD $22,000 plus GST) there is sense of the artist gestural involvement where the striations of the brown / sepia are visible as a single calligraphic stroke. With others there is the notion of time with the various strokes of colour measuring out the time taken to complete each work
Martin Creed, Work No 3766
Some of the work display additions to the quick gesture with Creed scumbling the yellow band in “Work No 3766” (USD $22,000 plus GST). This work like some other has a humorous element with the painting looking like a celebratory, multi-layered birthday cake.
The works all convey Creed’s minimalism of means, notions of time along with the structuring and ordering of objects shapes and colours.
Michael Parekōwhai, The Indefinite Article
Artspace is exhibiting Michael Parekōwhai’s sculptural object, “The Indefinite Article (1990) which had previously been shown at Artspace in 1990 in the show “Choice” curated by George Hubbard
The large letters based on McCahon’s cubist stylised letters constructed of MDF spell out the words “I AM HE”. Which references some of the McCahon paintings featuring the words “I Am”.
While borrowing from McCahon the work can also be seen as creating a bilingual pun linking the words to te reo where “HE” can be read as the indefinite article where the word can be defined as -a, an, some – or it can also mean something is wrong, mistaken or incorrect.
Other linguistic variations can be identified with the words. During the ”Cultural Safety” exhibition in Frankfort in 1995 where the work was shown this reviewer noted at the time – “His large word sculpture using the words of the Colin McCahon painting I AM HE was quickly identified by one perceptive German journalist as coming from the pen of John Lennon in “I Am the Walrus” [I am he as you are he, as you are me and we are all together] rather than the Bible or McCahon.
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Murray Savidan’s new photographic book “Stop. Look Both Ways” is something of a travel diary, a record of his journeys through Aotearoa/New Zealand and around the globe to diverse locations in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas. There are images of his time in Vietnam and Nepal, Egypt and Zanzibar, Italy and Spain, Japan and Vietnam.
But as well as a travel diary documenting the places he has been the images are also a record of the people of these places, seeing the aspects of other people’s lives which make them distinct but also seeing the similarities between us – partly ethnographic and partly the photographers own quirky approach to life.
Each of the individual photographs are the result of a keen eye, often capturing a moment, a contrast, a reflection or a facial expression which offers more than a simple photograph.
With many of the photographs Savidan has paired them in a way which emphasises their stories and creates new narratives. These often-subtle connections are an indication that he has reflected on the images and his way of contemplating the world around him.
There are spreads where he has contrasted the physical world a such as pairing the architectural shapes of the Guggenheim Gallery in Bilbao with those of a shrine in Bhaktapur – two different temples to culture.
The clash of cultures is seen is several of the works such as the linking of a beach on the Cinque Terra filled with sunbathing figures with a horde of burqa clad woman on a beach in Zanzibar.
Murray Savidan, Zanzibar
With some of the works there isa nod to other photographers such as his image of a crocodile in Madagascar which owes much to a similar work by Peter Peryer and his image of a woman contemplating a painting by Christian Schad at the Pompidou Centre is reminiscent of the similar gallery photographs of Thomas Struth.
He manages to find quirky connections as well. So, his view of the Anish Kapoor Dismemberment, Site 1 at Gibbs Farm is contrasted with horn shapes in an atrium in South Africa.
Then there are the landscapes such his pairing of a forlorn, misty landscape at Meola Reef with a desert landscape in Namibia. There are also some individual landscapes such as the drama view of a climber scaling a mountain in Fiordland.
Murray Savidan, Namibia
He contrasts a street scene in Kathmandu with one in Madagascar and a simple church in Northland with one in Madagascar as well as the contrasting portraits of a father and his child in Nepal and Egypt
While these paired images are serious reflections on culture and society there are many in which Savidan is making witty, or ironic comments.in one spread he pairs a gaudy jukebox with a church organ and in another he has juxtaposed the various parts of fish at a fish market in Vietnam with a figure lazing on a beach during a fishing competition on the East Cape., an image which itself is a droll comment on recreational fishing.
Murray Savidan, East Cape, New Zealand
He uses these images to create drama, explore history, culture and sexuality which become meditations on society and the individual, but in all of them he captures humanity.
Much of the work of the Danish / Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson focusses on issues around the impact of changing climate on our lives and our impacts on the environment. In his current exhibition “Your Curious Journey” at the Auckland Art Gallery the most obvious of his works which address these issues is “The Glacier Melt series 1999/2019”. In this series of 15 paired photographs the artist shows several; glaciers in Iceland ten years apart showing the extent of the glacier melt. The works are a clear visual documentation of the way in which warming temperatures are changing the nature of the environment. While they provide physical evidence of climate change they are also a metaphor for the issue and many of his other works are metaphorical or medications on the nature of the issues.
Eliasson is the Leonardo da Vinci of our times combining art and science with each of the disciplines informing the other providing observations and insights.
The title of the exhibition “Your Curious Journey” could be applied to the set of photographs as we witness the glaciers journeys of expansion and retraction, alerting us to the fact that climate change is part of the evolutionary journey of our past and future.
Linked to that work is one of the newer pieces, The Last Seven Days of Glacial Ice “(2024) where the progression of a melting block of ice over seven days has been rendered in bronze. The melted water has been captured in seven glass globes which are exhibited alongside the bronzes, The original block of ice is condensed to a shard of bronze and a globe of water but in reality the ice has disappeared, like some magic trick
While these and other works have a polemic quality to them, all his works are concerned with aspects of aesthetics -and scientific enquiry – light, structure, colour and movement. This mix of science and art can also be seen in “Double Spiral” where a long steel tube coils around itself creating a double helix in reference to the structure of DNA
One of the works which encapsulated all of these aspects is “Movement Microscope” (2011), a 16-minute video set in the artists studio / office in Berlin where the everyday activities of the staff become an elaborate dance routine and simple movements are elaborately observed. All the movements and interchanges are heighten by the inclusion of a group of “performers who move at a reduced pace, seemingly moving as though their recorded movements have been filmed at a slower speed.
We observe his designers and artists communicating ideas, working on designs, constructing works, sharing meals, their constructed works now on display in the gallery.
His largest work :”Under the Weather” hangs above the gallery atrium and appears to flicker and change as the observer moves beneath it. The images created are like weather patterns or brain scanner. The illusion of movement is created by an optical effect of two patterns similar to the auditory intersection of the Doppler Effect. Similar effects can be seen “Multiple Shadow House”.
Olafur Eliasson. Yellow Corridor
One of the more impressive works is at the entrance to the show. “Yellow Corridor “is an version of a work the artist has created in m any locations, flooding an area with yellow light which effects our perceptions of colour and form. The almost blinding light of the lit corridor recalls the quote of Robert Oppenheimer who described the Atom Bomb as brighter than a thousand – which also links to Eliasson’s “The Weather Project” which featured a massive sun located in the Tate’s Turbine Hall.
Eliasson also plays with water and in “Beauty (1993), films of misty water, illuminated by projected light create a mini Aurora Australis and with “Object defined by activity (then) a fountain of water is rendered as an almost solid figure by the use of stroboscopic light.
“Still River” brings the issue of climate change down to a local level with three large cubes of ices, slowly melting in the gallery. The ice is frozen water taken form the Waikato River at Lake Whakamaru. We witness the ice melting, see the drops of water falling into the collection tray and hear the sound of the ice cracking and the water melting. We can also see in the water the residue contained in the water – the chemical, effluent and soil and other contaminants.
It provides a physical reminder of the process of the natural world and the ways they can be disrupted.
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Whanganui’s Serjeant Gallery has just reopened after having been closed for ten years with an opening season entitled “Nō Konei | From Here” (Until 11 May 2025). The exhibition features over 200 artworks, spanning four centuries of European and New Zealand art history. Filling the gallery’s newly expanded exhibition spaces, works range from traditional gilt-framed paintings to contemporary practice in a variety of media.
Coinciding with the opening is the publication of “Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery” which tells the gallery’s 100-year history.
Written by Martin Edmond the book charts the Sarjeant Gallery’s early years and its development as a collecting and exhibiting institution that is now recognised as one of the major New Zealand’s art galleries.
The gallery which is one of the most elegant and imposing buildings in the country is located at a central point in the city and has been of significance to the development of the city.
Henry Sarjeant whom the gallery is named after had lived in the area since the 1860’s and had a lifelong interest in the arts, visiting the major galleries of Europe during a number of trips abroad. When he died in 1912, aged 82, he left property valued at £30,000 in trust to the Wanganui Borough Council for the purpose of building and maintaining an art gallery. The design of the gallery was won by Dunedin architect Edmund Anscombe and the building was constructed in the shape of a Greek Cross and faced with Oamaru stone.
The Governor General, the earl of Liverpool, laid the foundation stone on 20 September 1917, and on 6 September 1919 the Prime Minister, W. F. Massey, officially opened the gallery.
Frank Denton, The Sarjeant Gallery, 1926. Collection of Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery.
While the gallery was the dream of Henry Serjeant Martin Edmond notes that it was Sergeant’s wife, Ellen who was the driving force after his death.
“Ellen Sarjeant was a remarkable woman and without her we probably wouldn’t have the gallery we do today. She was almost 40 years younger than her first husband, Henry Sarjeant, the benefactor of the gallery; the eldest daughter of one of his close friends. It would be interesting to have some insight into the dynamics of their marriage but they were very discreet. It’s possible that he had the money and she had everything else: the drive and enthusiasm, the artistic insight, the business sense and the administrative skills. He would have seen this and I suspect their partnership was intended to transform the city the way the Sarjeant has. Ellen was among those who oversaw the building of the gallery; she was, with her second husband, John Neame, the initiator of its first acquisitions, both in New Zealand and overseas.”
The importance of Bill Millbank (Director 1978 – 2006) in developing the galleries status in his time at the gallery was a period when the institution became an important institution in developing a major programme as well as curating exhibition of national importance.
Edmond notes that the while Millbank initially had no real interest in the arts this changed with his travels overseas.
“crisscrossing Europe in a Kombi van, visiting galleries and churches, looking at art ‘all the time’. There was a revelation in Toledo, in front of an El Greco, when Milbank understood a hitherto obscure (to him) connection between these works and a painting he had admired on his weekly visits to the Sarjeant. He wondered, naively, if the Sarjeant painting was in fact by El Greco. It turned out to be the aforementioned Gethsemane by New Zealand artist Lois White.
Among the significant exhibitions that Millbank was responsible for was the first exhibition of “The Given as an Art-Political Statement” by Billy Apple in 1979. The exhibition included a controversial intervention by Apple, where he removed the sculpture “The Wrestlers” (Raffaello Romanelli) from its prominent position and replaced it with photographs of the sculpture on the surrounding walls.
He also initiated Te Ao Marama: Seven Māori Artists which showcased contemporary Māori art and travelled to Sydney.
Millbank was also responsible for the development of the Tylee Cottage residency which has seen over sixty artists make use of the programme including Laurence Aberhart, Mervyn Williams, Bronwynne Cornish, Adrian Jackman, Anne Noble and Jade Townsend
Edmond also writes of the pivotal role of Gordon Brown who was the first full time director between 1974 and 1977).
The book has the subtitle of “A Whanganui biography” and Edmond rounds out both history of the gallery and its place in the city’s history as well as the directors of the institution. He includes many incidental aspects of the city’s history both of artistic as well as general interest.
He includes the D’Arcy Cresswell drama where the poet was shot and injured by the Mayor Charles Mackay who had made homosexual advances towards him in the mayoral office. The incident brought Mackay’s 11-year career as mayor of Whanganui and as a major supporter of the gallery to a shocking end.
While the galleries new extension has been many years in planning and execution it was hampered early on by the mayor Michale Laws. He had Goebbels-like approach to culture, seeing the “arts community consisting mainly as bludgers and elitists”. His attempts to stop the building was a low point in the city’ s artistic history.
Threaded through the gallery’s history are accounts of the developing collection including donations, European buying sprees and local acquisitions. Over its 100 year the gallery has acquired a number of important works as well as establishing a fine collection of local artists including Edith Collier.
It is a compelling read full of lively, far sighted and dubious characters along with interesting accounts of the development of a public institution.
The book is generously illustrated with many works from the Sarjeant’s rich, varied and important collection. It also provides a full list of all the staff since the gallery’ inception as well as all the artists who have been Tylee Cottage residents.
Shane Cotton has progressively mined the history and myth of Māori along with its intersection with European colonisation, featuring images which recall stories, along with references to historical and mythical figures and locations.
With his latest exhibition of “New Paintings” the artist could be seen as entering his Fauvist period with many of the paintings having the features of the Fauves. Those painters of the early part of the twentieth century employed simplified shapes along with intense and juxtaposed colours.
The “He Waka Karaka” ($9000) featuring a small Pacific craft with a sail exemplifies this aspect with intense blues, purples and green while the large, colourful “Super Radiance” ($90,000) is an example of one of the new directions of Cottons painting – more traditional landscape painting. Even though his previous works have featured landscape forms these were generally refined and abstracted.
There are several works of Cotton’s Toi Moko works where the tattooed and preserved ‘shrunken’ Māori heads reference conflict, trade, and repatriations. In works such as “The Great Attractors” ($55,000) the tattoo lines tracing out genealogy are linked to the notion of neural connections, knowledge links and computer networks.
Shane Cotton, The Great Attractors
Apart from the shrunken heads Cotton has rarely included figures in his work but in this show, there are several which connect with his living in Northland and revisiting some of his earlier work and the notions of colonialism and cultural exchange.
Shane Cotton, The Walker
In “The Walker” ($8500) he has replicated the self portrait of the early explorer/artist Augustus Earle taken from Earle ‘s painting “Distant view of the Bay of Island”. Cotton has also appropriated another figure from the work , A Māori with a taiaha who is leading Earle . This figure is also present in “Super Radiance”, “Sunset Gate” ($48,000) and “He tangata hikoi” ($8500) acting as a guide through the landscapes of the North.
Augustus Earle, Distant view of the Bay of Island
Cotton has also used an image of missionary and publisher of Māori works Thomas Kendall taken from the painting “Hongi Hika and Waikato” with Thomas Kendall in England in 1820” by James Barry.
James Barry, Hongi Hika and Waikato” with Thomas Kendall in England in 1820
This image is used in the small portrait “Internal Visions” ($8750) and “The Visitation” ($8500) where Cotton has depicted him contemplating a colourful, modernist manaia form where in the original painting he is looking at Hongi Hika and Waikato.
Shane Cotton, The Visitation
There are also a few of the artists flower painting such as “Insert” ($12,500) which have developed over the years for his early plant paintings.
There are a number of the artist’s three panel works most of which feature a manaia figure flanked by delicate foliage while others have landscape/vegetation panels or in the case of ”Ahuaiti’s Cave” ($130,000) images of the sea. This work refers to the Ahuaiti who was rejected by her husband, forcing her to live in a cave on the Northland coast with her son Uenuku Kuare who is depicted at the base of the painting as a tiny figure, the same image as Earle’s guide in “Distant view of the Bay of Island”.
Shane Cotton, Ahuaiti’s Cave
This linking of mythic figure to historical figure to an invented guide inhabiting some the paintings is an example of Cottons ability to transition across myth, history, time and location.
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Gary McMillan, Scene 60 (detail)Elizabeth Rees, Low Tide
Gary McMillan, City in Progress
Fox Jensen McCrory Gallery
September/October
Elizabeth Rees, The Bay
ARTIS Gallery
Until October 7
Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
Two recent exhibitions see artists responding to the to the light, colours and textures of the environment just as artists of 150 years ago did with some variations on Impressionism.
In his latest exhibition “City in Progress” Gary McMillan has continued his depiction of views of the inner city, the motorways and industrial buildings.
These are nearly all seen from the interior of a car, capturing the often-fleeting images we have when driving. He also captures light in its various forms –sunlight at dawn and dusk, reflected light, refracted light, motorway lamps, industrial lights and traffic lights.
Each of the images has the simple title of “Scene” plus a number, an indication of the artist’s referencing photography and film which gives many of the works a slightly surreal quality.
As well as the connections to film and photography his work connects with traditional realist painting, pointillism and neo-Impressionism.
Many of the works capture the flash of recognition, of half seeing objects seen from a moving car as Scene 52 ($9500) – the rain speckled windscreen, parts of the car, overhead road signs, lamp standards and a blinding sun. They are the impressions the brain takes in as it makes the journey.
Gary McMillan, Scene 63
Scene 63 ($9500) provides a complex view – light blooming on the car’s window screen, light shining through obscuring foliage, another view reflected in the cars side mirror. It becomes an image composed of different elements of light. But these various elements of light are all painted illusions created by the artist.
In these works, he investigates the way in which paint creates the illusion of the photographic pixel as well as the painterly impressionist dot.
At a distant his works look like photographs but as the viewer gets closer to the work one is more aware of the Seurat-like pointillism or the pixilation of low-resolution photographs.
With “Scene 57” ($5500) the pointillism is far more apparent with the sky and clouds stippled with the small dots of colour. The artist has added a sense of structure to the work with parallel power lines and one of his ever-present lamp posts.
Gary McMillan Scene 60
This focus on sky and cloud is also seen in “Scene 60”($8000) where the billowing cloud looks like a massive explosion saturated with colour.
Where Gary McMillans exhibition looks at the urban environment Elizabeth Rees’s work is focussed on an isolated area of Northland. As she notes in the catalogue – “”The Bay” is a response to my new small-town life in the Bay of Islands where light ever changes the sea and bushclad land. My recent acquisition of a boatshed in a small tidal bay has now become my full-time studio. Being surrounded by water, this change has offered me yet another perspective – being able so closely connected to the natural environment.”
Her paintings owe much to the style of the Impressionists with a sense of the artist painting in the open air surrounded by her subject.
In responding to an environment she feels some connection with these paintings are a record of the various times of day, moods and qualities of light she has observed
Many of her previous works featured figures in a landscape, their presence providing a sense of isolation. In these newer works it is the landscape itself which provides that sense of isolation.
Elizabeth Rees, A High Tide
Here there are brooding landscapes such as “Summer Shade” ($10,000) where the touches of colour seep through the dark foliage.
With works like “A High Tide” ($8000)) the colours are almost bleached out with light swirling around the shapes of trees.
Elizabeth Rees, On the Beach
A similar work “On the Beach” ($8000 where the foliage is almost shattered by light, could have been used as the cover illustration for the Nevil Shute novel “On the Beach” which tells of impending nuclear pollution in the South Pacific
A further connection could also see the work in reference to the origins of the title in the lines from T S Eliots “The Wasteland”
In this last of meeting places We grope together And avoid speech Gathered on this beach of the tumid river. connection
Two of the works features figures as in “Low Tide” ($8000) where the small figures contribute to the sense of isolation and drama. “Last Light” ($10,500) feels less successful as the two figures contemplating the vista do not contribute to the sense of remoteness.
With “The Bay” ($10,500) there is more colour contrast with the blue of the water and the sky more dominant and the colours of the foliage picked out by light.
Elizabeth Rees, The Bay
“Nestled in the Bay” ($13,500) also alludes to the human presence with several low buildings or boathouses which merge with the light colours of the sand and sea.
The merging of sands and sea is also apparent in “Dunes Beyond” ($10,500) where the dunes seem to be the foam of crashing waves.
With nearly all these works it is light which is the dominant aspect with the artist endeavouring to create an ethereal presence of cloud and sky .The hills and foliage created with scumbled paint give a sense of seeing through a darkened or fogged glass.
An anthology of performance art in Aotearoa New Zealand
Edited by Christopher Braddock, Ioana Gordon-Smith, Layne Waerea and Victoria Wynne-Jones
Massey University Press
Published September 2024
RRP $65.00
Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
In 2014 The Walters Prize included a work by Kalisolaite ‘Uhila where the artist inhabited the Auckland Art Gallery precinct for several months, living as a homeless person – eating sleeping and communicating with visitors, staff and other destitute people. The work was intended to draw attention to the plight of the homeless.
However, going to the gallery to find the ”art” and the artist necessitated searching the art gallery, the nearby park and streets until I found him wedged into an overhang on the gallery’s roof.
This search seemed more like a game of hide and seek rather than being immersed in a social /political experience /experiment. At the time It seemed to only involve me and the artist, reflecting on an encounter.
That encounter is what can loosely be called an example of post-object art or performance art which has been evolving in New Zealand since the 1970’s.
With that encounter and many others one can see that performance art requires an audience as well as documentation as many of the events are transient.
Now an anthology/reader of performance art in New Zealand, ”Resetting the Coordinates” has been published,providing an in-depth survey of the artists and artworks in the performance area which have happened over the past fifty years.
At the core of performance art is the audience and the performer/artist, the works having a theatrical element to them in which artist often draw attention to time, space, and body,
The goal of these actions is to generate a reaction with themes which are commonly linked to life experiences of the artist themselves along with social and political criticism.
Darcell Apelu:, New Zealand Axemens Association: Womens subcommittee president 2 August 2014, documentation of performance. Courtesy Artspace, Auckland. Photo by Peter Jennings
The book records a number of the activities which occurred as described in the introduction by editor Christiopher Braddock,
“If, on 2 April 1971, you had journeyed out across the unsealed metal roads to the west coast of the Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland region of the North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand, venturing as far as the remote Karekare Beach, to the north of Whatipu Beach and the great Manukau Harbour and south of Piha Beach, you would have come across the mystifying scene of ten people arduously sweeping the beach with long-handled yard brooms. “
Organised by Phil Dadson and colleagues this was the first in a series of purposeless works of which Dadson said : ‘This was work for the sake of the work, no particular purpose, no rewards’ across a ‘pointless-to-sweep stretch of beach’ in ‘communion with the elements and the place’.
These activities often existed outside the confines of the mainstream contemporary art scene and were often undocumented. Many of the names included in the anthology will be recognisable because of their wide-ranging practice, others however have had lower profiles.
Central figures have been Phil Dadson, Jim Allen, Annea Lockwood, Peter Roche & Linda Buis, Andrew Drummond, Daniel Malone, Shannon Te Ao and Lonnie Hutchinson. There have also been numerous other practitioners who are included in the book.
Christopher Braddock, one of the editors says “Mainstream art history tends to prioritise static forms of art that are more commodifiable and saleable such as painting and sculpture. Anthologies often prioritise these artforms, such as Michael Dunn’s “New Zealand Painting: A Concise History| published in 2004. Furthermore, large-scale anthologies can cement these institutional prejudices, such as Hamish Keith’s The Big Picture: The History of New Zealand Art from 1642 (2007) which largely ignores performance art.”
The book underlines the fact that performance art is a distinctive part of recent art history, with its activities presenting social and political approaches which emphasises the connections between artist, audience and art critic / historian.
These events often combined elements of anarchy, humour, spirituality, repetition, the unplanned and unexpected.
There are a several chapters which examine the history and development of performance art, some which look at the aspects of woman’s art practice, the development of Māori and Pacific based works, queer performance art and performance art in post -quake Christchurch.
There are numerous photographs and records of the activities which only give a limited appreciation of the performances such as Annae Lockwood piano burning while the multiple images of Andrew Drummond’s projects give some sense of the scale of his work.
CardboardConfessional_ Audrey Baldwin, Oscar Bannan, Bridget Harris, NeilMacLeod, Annemieke Montagne, Pat Parkin, Jennifer. Katherine Shield 2016, documentation of performance for the Centre of Contemporary Art Toi Moroki programme,Ōtautahi Christchurch. Courtesy Centre of Contemporary Art Toi Moroki. Photo by Janneth Gi
Among the other projects included are the documentation project of the Christchurch “Cardboard Confessional” (2016) developed by Audrey Baldwin et al, Louise Potiki Bryant’s dance work “Te Taki o te Ua / The Sound of Rain” (2001), Jeremy Leatinu’u’s Queen Victoria (2013) where the artist contemplated statues of the queen, Juliet Batten’s Women’s Project of 1985 at Te Henga Beach and Bruce Barber’s “Mt Eden Crater Performance (1973) which was a collaboration with Solar Plexus as part of the drumming event initiated by Phil Dadson..
It is a fascinating book with lots of performances which have been rarely written about, seemingly lost to history but which tell us much about the social, political and spiritual examinations and soundings which artists have made.
The writers include Natasha Conland, Gregory Burke, Ioana Gordon-Smith, Khye Hitchcock, Audrey Baldwin, Bruce E Phillips and Heather Galbraith
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