Alex Monteith – Na Trioblóidí and Decolonising Tactics

Abstract

Alex Monteith’s practice falls somewhere in the interconnecting threads of performance, situation and place, and often involves working with different kinds of communities. As a woman born in Northern Ireland and then as an immigrant to NZ Aotearoa, she offers an interesting perspective on colonialist subjectivity and its ongoing effects. Covered are her Irish works, Chapter and Verse (2005) and Shadow V (2017), both dealing with The Troubles, and her ongoing project Murihiku Coastal Incursions (2014–) that explores questionable archaeological practices in 1970s’ Aotearoa. Each artwork offers a different set of problems about how to present an ethically positioned political-aesthetics that deeply considers the rights of the people with whom she engages. Teased out are the implications of the British Navy’s Pacific explorations in the 18th century that preceded the displacement of first peoples in Aotearoa and Australia by waves of settlers. Other artworks included in this chapter are Sarah Munro’s series, Trade Item (2018), which are reworkings of Tupaia’s, Māori Bartering a Crayfish (1768), William Hodges, Cascade Cove: Dusky Bay (1775) and John Glover’s, The River Nile, Van Diemen’s Land from Mr Glover’s Farm (1837). [187]