Zealand Artist Research Articles

Guy Ngan: His Art, Life and Pacific-Chinese Aesthetics

This article is a study of the art of Guy Ngan 顏國鍇 (1926–2017). A Chinese-New Zealander, Ngan’s work and aesthetic considerations are yet to be adequately understood. I will introduce his background, discuss his major works and elaborate on his approach to art practice. I will also discuss Ngan’s identity, his self-identification and the reception of his art in the context of New Zealand art history. What are the characteristics of Ngan’s work? How has Ngan’s Chinese cultural background informed his art practice? And what constitutes his “Pacific-Chinese aesthetics”? I will argue for a positive case of a Pacific-Chinese aesthetics in New Zealand as proposed and practised by Ngan. The article concludes with a discussion of recent changes in the reception of his oeuvre.

Introduction

In 2013 I edited the final issue (as I was dismayed to discover afterwards) of the Journal of New Zealand Art History (JONZAH). It is a pleasure, then, to write this introduction for a special issue of the Journal of New Zealand Studies (JNZS) devoted to New Zealand art history. The quantity and quality of the articles in this issue go a considerable way to filling the void left by JONZAH in the intervening decade, even if the loss of a dedicated double-blind peer-reviewed journal remains keenly felt.

Overturning the Narrative: Steele and Goldie's Arrival of the Maoris in New Zealand, 1899

New Zealand’s best-known historical painting, Louis John Steele and Charles Frederick Goldie’s Arrival of the Maoris in New Zealand (1899), has influenced the way Māori history has been (mis)understood. Through a detailed examination of the historical, anthropological and artistic sources that informed the painting, a new understanding emerges. Rather than a generic imagined depiction of Māori arrival, a long-overlooked source for the narrative is found in the voyage of the Arawa waka and its encounter with the “throat of Te Parata.” The analysis gives new insight into the artists’ intent, enabling us to begin to address the uncomfortable place Arrival occupies in New Zealand art history and culture.

Locating Paul Olds Within New Zealand Modernism

The place in New Zealand art history of Paul Olds (1922–1976) remains relatively obscure. Olds’ oeuvre defies easy categorisation and does not readily align with established notions of New Zealand modernism. He made a considerable impact as a painter and teacher in Wellington, where he settled in 1957 after six years in Europe. However, his reputation dwindled after his premature death. Olds’ paintings juxtapose figurative and non-figurative elements, organic and inorganic forms and employ nuanced texturing and complex colour layering. Observing his oeuvre chronologically reveals his distinctive approach and his subtle and nuanced contribution to New Zealand’s post-war modernist narrative.[i] [i] The author (Miriam Olds Spence) was born in Wellington in 1963 to Elisabeth and Paul Olds. When I was three years old, my parents separated and my mother and I moved to Germany, where I grew up. My mother was engaged in postgraduate research at the University of Tübingen, and later became a lecturer there. After we moved, I only saw my father twice, briefly. I did not return to Wellington until 1979, three years after my father died. My research stems from a desire to better understand my father’s place in New Zealand’s postwar art history.

Gordon Walters

Francis Pound’s Gordon Walters could be considered the final component and critical analysis of the life and times of four pioneering New Zealand artists whose reputations and legacies acquired prominence in the 1960s. Where Toss Woollaston (1910–1998) and Rita Angus (1908–1970) are given due and comprehensive consideration by Jill Trevelyan (2004 and 2020 respectively), and Colin McCahon (1919–1987) in Peter Simpson’s two-volume magnum opus (2019–2020), Pound’s book on the life and art of Gordon Walters (1919–1995) completes this equation. In making connections between these artists, there is inevitably a sense of the founding of a national art history. Gordon Brown and Hamish Keith’s once highly influential publication, An Introduction to New Zealand Painting 1839–1967 (1969), devoted less attention to Walters’ abstraction than to the more figurative and referential work of his peers. But now Pound’s Gordon Walters comprehensively eliminates the remnants of any possible doubt about Walters’ central importance in New Zealand art history. To paraphrase the writer’s commentary on Walters’ own art and legacy, this is an astonishing publication.

Don Binney: Flight Path

One of the joys of reviewing is that every so often a book comes along that is elegantly written, persuasively argued and beautifully produced. The result is something special that is both wonderful to look at and a joy to read. Congratulations, then, to editor Sam Elworthy and his team, especially book designer Keely O’Shannessy; I have never reviewed anything quite so visually stunning as Don Binney: Flight Path. Gregory O’Brien’s balanced and insightful text is illustrated on every few pages by high quality reproductions of this talented artist’s paintings. Most readers would expect many images of birds, given Binney’s earlier paintings, but he also painted landscapes in New Zealand and other parts of the globe, including Mexico, Africa, Britain and Australia. Binney was skilled too at painting still lifes, creating spectacular montages and occasionally venturing into challenging surreal images of human forms. Despite Binney’s somewhat flamboyant personality and occasional carping about trends in the broader New Zealand art scene, O’Brien confirms that he was an effective environmentalist with genuine sympathy for, and understanding of, the Māori view of nature and spirituality.

“Eyes are eyes & can’t be neglected”: A New Insight into Frances Hodgkins?

An aspect of the Anglo-New Zealand artist Frances Hodgkins (1869­­–1947) which has been largely overlooked by art historians is the challenges that she faced with her eyesight, particularly from the 1930s onwards. These are documented here, using her letters to family and friends. The article then applies findings in the pioneering studies of art and ophthalmology by Patrick Trevor-Roper and John S. Werner to a selection of Hodgkins’ paintings of the period. Links are made between her use of colour ­– which earlier writers have described as lyrical and “rapturous” – and the strong probability that she was suffering from cataracts.

Te heahea me ngā toi, te hikohiko: Productive Idiocy, mātauranga Māori and Art-activism Strategies in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Abstract This article explores what it can mean to navigate notions of productive idiocy with aspects of mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge), through some recent art-as-activism practices of the author, Aotearoa/New Zealand artist Mark Harvey. The works explicated include Waitākere Drag and Auau in the Te Wao Nui ā Tiriwa forest ranges and Productive Promises, which was part of TEZA (Trans Economic Zone of Aotearoa) in Ōtautahi/Christchurch. Avital Ronell’s Nietzschean-influenced perspectives on idiocy are drawn from in relation to Western and Māori perspectives, along with Roger Sansi’s work on idiocy as dissent. From this aggregation of epistemologies, it is proposed that idiocy can be productive through art as activism and that this can align with Indigenous Māori perspectives on playing the fool as a form of resistance and refusal. Examples of Māori concepts engaged with here include perspectives on relationship building, human relationships with forests and the environment, and sovereignty under Te Tiriti o Waitangi (The Treaty of Waitangi). These art-activism projects promised micro-attempts at making positive changes for the communities in which they were situated through performatively generated actions from a Māori perspective within the shroud of ongoing colonization and capitalism.

Seeing Red and Feeling Blue: Social Commentary and Protest in the Work of Michael Reed

Accounts of politically inspired art occupy the margins of New Zealand art history. The career of Michael Reed (born 1950, Christchurch) offers an opportunity to discuss how a New Zealand artist has responded to shifts in 20th and early 21st century global debates regarding social justice, economic exploitation, cultural domination and war. He works across a range of mainly print-based techniques but has also found international recognition for his technically innovative ‘medals of dishonor.’ Through his frequent involvement in collaborative projects, Reed has become part of national and international networks of artists who attempt to speak for the many victims of geo-political power struggles.

Mythologising McCahon: A Heretical View

McCahon has frequently been characterised as a prophet, the greatest New Zealand artist, and exceptional, as if his works are somehow outside history and beyond criticism. This mythologisation has largely passed unquestioned in art critical and historical texts over the last sixty years. This essay views McCahon’s work and mythologised persona from a different perspective. It emphasises art-making processes and the business of establishing a public profile that ground his work and person in the material, everyday world, rather than elevating them transcendentally. A different picture of McCahon’s art and the means by which it came to be so idealised and hallowed emerges.

Photographing Moments to be Seen. Edith Amituanai’s Little Publics

The photographic work of Aotearoa New Zealand artist Edith Amituanai generates the confident self-assertion of publics that potentially shifts misperceptions of people and place for both subjects and their audiences. A belief in service, a characteristic legacy of Amituanai’s Sāmoan family background has led her to document people, particularly diverse diaspora communities, in the western suburbs of Auckland city where she also lives, and to documenting people more broadly in their neighbourhoods or personal environments. Her images have enabled largely unnoticed and hence provisional publics associated with disregarded public spaces to see themselves presented in mainstream society in art galleries, publications and social media, thereby potentially shifting the stereotypes of people and local places to aid a more complete depiction of a society beyond the dominant European settler demographic. Amituanai’s images of youth, family, cultural and interest group communities and those connected with educational institutions convey the multiple associations that connect individuals. While these associations can be aligned with Grant Kester’s concept of politically coherent communities’ or Michael Warner’s ‘counterpublics’ I argue that the people visible in Amituanai’s work or who take agency to respond to her photos are making themselves publics on their own terms, creating publics that are equal to any other public. The activation of public identity that claims shared space has occurred during the institutional exhibition of Amituanai’s images where subjects and visitors respond to photographs in demonstrations of their own agency.

Art Gallery Education in New Zealand during COVID-19

This article describes the unprecedented coming together of New Zealand art gallery educators to respond to the challenges of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. This newly formed community of practice met virtually three times at critical points. At each stage, new concerns were discussed and understandings evolved. The gallery educators were able to approach shared issues cooperatively, enabling mutual support to a degree that had hitherto not been possible. By the end of these meetings, gallery educators were reestablishing their regular teaching practice with the integration of many of the innovations of the period. Additionally, the meetings fulfilled a preexisting desire for closer contact and professional support, and thus proved to be the foundation of an ongoing national professional group for New Zealand art gallery educators.

Worshipping Beauty in the South Seas

This article analyses the wave of avant garde art movements that arrived on our shores in the late nineteenth century and its impact on applied art and the general lifestyles of artists and patrons in New Zealand. With particular reference to Kennett Watkins’ speech given at a meeting of the New Zealand Art Students’ Association’ in 1883, this account looks at the display of Māori objects in both public settings and in the privacy of the artist’s studio. It also acknowledges the role of illustrated magazines in promoting the public profile of professional artists working in Auckland at the turn of the twentieth century. Many patrons in the elite social circles of Auckland admired artists such as Charles F. Goldie for being arbiters of taste and hisbeautifully decorated studio both linked him to the ways European academic artists presented themselves, while using local artifacts to connect his practice to New Zealand. The dispersal of illustrated art magazines in New Zealand became a marketing tool for artists to promote their art practice but, most of all, elevate their status as members of the social elite in urban centres.

Frances Hodgkins goes to Market

The marketplace is a recurring subject in the work of artist Frances Hodgkins (1869–1947). Her handling of it over the years, and in different contexts, shows how she developed as a professional artist and with what trends she linked herself. The market can be seen in the work of British artists (e.g., Charles Worsley) of whom she will have been aware before she left her home country, as well as in the work of French ones (e.g., Camille Pissarro) whom she will have discovered once she went to Europe. A study of her use of this motif is essential to locating her as a New Zealand artist who became a European artist.

People, Place, Public: The Public Art of Nic Moon

In the realm of public art, New Zealand artist Nic Moon’s practice extends from permanent outdoor sculpture to ephemeral, site-responsive installations and staged public events. Such a range spans the trajectory of contemporary public art, a genre which theorists struggle to define categorically: historical precedents for public art offer no template for the present or for the future. Working in conjunction with mana whenua iwi, local government agencies, art institutions, museums, architects and the community¸ Moon creates large-scale object art as well as temporary and relocatable works, circumstantial installations, public artworks as utilities, and ephemeral art with a short life span. Her public art encompasses a broad spectrum of forms while speaking constantly of human ecology - the interdisciplinary study of relationships between people, our social systems and our environments. It is these relationships that underpin the work of Moon who, in common with new genre public artists internationally, is prepared to work outside the historical framework of public art to engage her audience in socially conscious, political art.

Editorial

As we stated in our first issue of BackStory in December 2016, the editorial team has sought to produce a journal with an appeal beyond the academy to those working in the broad field of New Zealand art, media and design history. We have reached out to those working in the country’s libraries, galleries and museums for contributions and we have also provided space for commentaries and personal reflections on particular aspects of our cultural history.

History in Ruin: The Reconstructed Aesthetics of Michael Stevenson

Since the late 1990s, the work of the New Zealand artist Michael Stevenson has centred on reconstructed historical objects that resemble artefacts from archaeology, anthropology and material cultur...

Colin McCahon and Imants Tillers: The Care of Small Birds – An Ecological Perspective

Reflecting on the upsurge of environmental awareness that occurred in the 1960s and 70s provides a valuable starting point for discussion of the work of New Zealand artist Colin McCahon. He was pra...

Artwork characteristics and prices in the New Zealand secondary art market, 1988–2011

ABSTRACTUsing hedonic pricing, prices realised at auction are estimated against artwork characteristics for New Zealand for over 27,000 artworks by over 1600 artists. The data-set is larger and more representative of an art market, especially for lower prices, than all other art price studies. The number of works by each artist auctioned over the entire period is a measure of each artist's market presence. Sample selection bias created by unsold artworks is corrected using the Heckit method. Estimation results including the creation of the first New Zealand art price index are presented and interpreted.

Editorial

It is a pleasure to be able to introduce the first issue of BackStory. The idea behind this journal is to provide a medium for those interested in ‘looking back’ at New Zealand’s art, media and design history. These are the stories that lie behind current media, art and design production and practice in this country. It is envisaged that this new journal will provide an opportunity to explore our rich heritage in these fields.
 In part the motivation to launch a new journal is to meet a perceived need. The country presently does not have a journal which has the focus envisaged for BackStory. The Journal of New Zealand Art History (JoNZAH) was last published in 2012/13 and its absence has meant that those interested in reading and writing about this aspect of our cultural history lost a valued publication. The editorial team has approached the Hocken Library who provided editorial and production input for the JoNZAH and gained their support for the BackStory initiative. It is acknowledged that the new journal is not a re-launch or continuation of the JoNZAH. Instead, BackStory: Journal of New Zealand Art, Media and Design History, seeks to broaden the scope of its predecessor to include media and design history. The editorial teamhope that those who valued the JoNZAH will find value in this journal as a worthy successor.The initial editorial team for BackStory is drawn from the Auckland University of Technology (AUT) and an Editorial Advisory Board has been established. The establishing editorial team are Minna Pesonen (Designer), Rosemary Brewer, Alan Cocker and Peter Hoar from the School of Communication Studies, Peter Gilderdale from the School of Art & Design and Simon Mowatt from the Faculty of Business. It is the hope of this team that BackStory has an appeal beyond academia and will inspire contributions from those working in this country’s libraries, galleries and museums as well as others who have an interest in the history of New Zealand art, design, photography and media. We are pleased that this first issue contains contributions from curators at the Auckland Museum and Te Papa, and that there is a wide representation of different material drawn from across the target disciplines. Our hope is that the quality of the research and writing, and the common New Zealand focus will entice readers into crossdisciplinary explorations.
 All submissions except commentaries will be blind peer reviewed by two reviewers to conform to university research publication standards but we are seeking contributions that will have an appealbeyond the university. In the so-called online age the decision to publish a printed form is deliberate. The editorial team are seeking the highest print production standards conscious of the artifact value of this journal.