Clayton's Art

Tu Tangata, Issue 27, 1 December 1985, Page 50

Clayton's Art

Pitopito korero

Selecting for a survey exhibition, especially one in which the restrictions on numbers of artists mean that the ‘broad panorama’ sought for, will necessarily be compressed and impossible to achieve, nevertheless sets useful challenges.

The selection was one of artists rather than works. Artists do not carry the burden of representation: the selector/curator must take that on. This group of artists are individuals; they displayed remarkably little interest in the work being done by other selected artists. They saw themselves as representing themselves, not New Zealand, as participating on an individual basis in a survey of directions being taken by contemporary artists.

Use of Maori/Polynesian content is not uncommon in New Zealand art, progress of a sort has been made from psuedo-anthropological recording, the romanticised portrayals of the dying race, and comic-book caricatures of earlier New Zealand art. But while it was relatively easy to shed the embarrassingly obvious prejudices of such representation, it is proving much more difficult to skirt around current attitudes about appropriation of the Maori/Polynesian culture. lan McMillan's painted planks and Jacki Fahey's oil paintings attempt to confront the issues McMillan’s grounds are the weatherboards of European colonial villas, now demolished: they come from the inner city suburb in which he lives, a city which contains the largest Polynesian population in the world. In those inner suburbs, crammed into the colonial villas and cottages which remain, that population can be found: McMillan's work reflects on the connectikons thereby set up, physically and intellectually. He has covered these boards with layers of paint, in luminous skins,

That does not mean that some of the strands of art practice shown here do not derive from a concern with place: living in New Zealand and making art of it. A concern which surfaces here, is the long overdue assessment of colonialism in New Zealand. Not overdue in the general sense, perhaps: the reappraisals which have occurred in this century have not been ignored by this community, despite its isolation. But overdue perhaps in the arena of interpretation, in the connections and appropriations, the ommissions and denials which have been made by pakeha artists in this country.

thick ridges, patterns which reflect a variety of origins, but do not exclude those of the Polynesian cultures among which he lives. Jacki Fahey’s stance is less easy to analyse: the racing Maoris on horseback her work Departure Leaving Going Away derive from an image made by a colonial artist who demonstrated in his work in general if not the arrogance at least the patronising attitudes of other artists of his time and circumstances.

Jacqueline Fraser's aims as an artist are simple: to decorate the environments she works in, to make things that are beautiful and a pleasure to behold:

I’m trying to make things look nice I’ll be quite open about that. The main object of my sculptures is that they look lovely. I don't want them to be ugly or threatening. I’m trying to please people. I’m not challenging them and making them think serious thoughts or anything... my work is just arranging beautiful things.

Fraser sees beauty in unexpected things. The most commonplace objects and materials give colour and texture to her work brightly coloured string and plastic-coated electrical wire; rainbow strips of cloth; odds and ends from junk shops and Army Surplus stores hairnets, plastic napkin rings, coloured stockings. She takes a childlike delight in cheap glittery treasures shiny parcel ribbon, scraps of metal foil, tiny glass jewels and beads. And often there are natural materials shells, driftwood, ferns, twigs. Sometimes nature is what she starts with a tree to decorate, a park in which to weave a little magic. There's also a spiritual aspect to her way of working, derived from her Maori heritage a reverence for process and materials and a tranquility which the artist hopes shines through the work.

I saw a picture once in a travel magazine of the gardens of a Buddhist monastery —that's the nearest thing to my own work that I’ve seen.

Is McMillan’s art cultural appropriation? Kowhaiwhai pou pou panels, tuku tuku and especially, taonga of the contact period; all these have clearly been integrated into the style and format of the plank paintings. Just as the artist has changed the object nature of the ceiling boards so too has he altered the original context of the art motifs used on them. The diamond, spade and clubs shapes which appear in many of his works are connected with those seen in the early twentieth-century settlement at Maungapohatu of the Tuhoe prophet Rua Kenana. The walls of

Rua’s meeting house Hiona featured these playing card emblems as religious symbols.

McMillian reappropriates these signs which have themselves been taken from pakeha culture by the Maori and redefines their usage.

The paintings are ideally seen collectively resting on the floor inside an architectural space. Their vertical freestanding format relates more to the way pou pou panels interact with the interior space of whare nui than to the pakeha concept of a painting series hung on gallery walls. These works are designed to interact more with their immediate physical environment, there being an intentional dichotomy between what is seen as sculpture and what is seen as painting.

McMillan is one of a number of New Zealand painters involved in this process of cultural feedback a reprocessing of that which the Maori has taken and assimilated from European artforms. Gordon Walters, Colin McCahon and Tony Fomison all recognise that New Zealand like Australia is a land with tangata-whenua (people of the land) and they seek to reflect something of the rich cultural diversity of this land. Instead of simply looking to Europe and America to keep up with paintings latest, these artists like McMillan recognise the wealth of cultural resources available on their own back doorstep.

lan McMillan On not apologizing for being white 1981, and the Springbok Tour shattered forever the myth of New Zealand, the spotless racially integrated tolerant paradise. I was amazed at the depth of disconnection between imagination and reality in the minds of our people, and shocked by the confused battle lines which this dissociation produced, snaking across all racial and social boundaries.

Living in the Pacific, on Polynesian soil, in a transplanted European culture, where traditions have been strangled and societies disrupted beyond recognition, one may be prey to a strange sense of rootlessness and disadvantage, which sours people to their cores. Unless, however, one is able to keep alive a sense of a relationship to the past, and recognises the part one has played in relation to the past: we, the manuhiri have by sheer force of numbers dispossessed the tangata whenua of Aotearoa who once welcomed us to their land.

My present work is the result of a task undertaken in 1981 to create an identity which would enable me to never have to apologize for being white. To do this I had to establish a connection, however tenuous, between what I did and the traditional art of the Maori.

Otherwise why be here at all? After a study tour of the East Coast meeting houses and marae, I began to find a positive vein running through New Zealand history: co-operation and sharing of technology and culture, to balance the long depressing history of destruction and mutual disregard. I found this in the 1880 s meeting house, Rongopai, and in so-called ‘folk art' where traditions and forms mix freely, far from the chilling eye of the

critical aesthetic. It is to the coat-tails of this tradition of mixture and integration that I attach myself, and my work. Currently, I'm continuing my researches into the Pacific, with a trip to the Cook Islands to look at the traditional and contemporary culture of the islanders, whose presence in Auckland has been a source of inspiration to many New Zealand artists. We are all manuhiri visitors to Aotearoa.