Te kaiora āhuatanga ōkiko engari anō te hākirikiri katakata, ko ngā mahi konumohe papaangi – wahie – tahuna ki roto i tēnei whakaaturanga he mea karanga whakahoki ki ngā whakapāpātanga ki mua a Robinson ki ngā rawa tāwhaiwhai ngana pērā i te kōmama me te whītau. Engari kia whakaritea ki te tērā pea whakameremere hītōria o ētahi mahi tawhito ake, ko ēnei “tuhinga waro” he pukuhohe mōkinokino, ahakoa ka hē pea kia whakamāori i tēnei tū whakapū – whakatapeha hei pāraharaha tūturu.
When I was growing up on our rural property in the South Wairarapa, my Dad was engaged in a constant war with his chickens. They would crap on the back deck, the side deck, and occasionally walk into the house and crap on the kitchen floor. He spent countless hours hosing down their muck and complaining about their every move, but still loved them enough to run a regular “name my chooks” competition on his Facebook page for a time.
Bulletin talks to Anne-Sophie Ninino, a French-trained conservator based in Ōtautahi Christchurch with international experience in museum conservation and a specialisation in gilding, frame and heritage restoration.
The laptop fires up and a dreamlike virtual world materialises. Exquisite peacocks – glassy black, ethereal white – emerge on a moonlit stage, framed by icy blue branching patterns. A cast of swans glide through a luminous, rippling lake in measured arcs, their movements both urgent and graceful. In other scenes, two royal lovers – bound by fate, divided by unseen forces – circle one another, mirroring gestures of longing and hesitation.
Physically imposing yet also vaguely laughable, the burnt- wood-veneer aluminium works in this exhibition call back to Robinson’s previous engagements with obstinately artificial materials, such as polystyrene and felt. However, compared to the almost histrionic theatricality of some older works, these “charcoal drawings” are comically dour, although it would be a mistake to interpret this faux-minimalist posture as purely ironic.
I doubt that any printer’s first book has proved more wholly apposite than Pathway To The Sea, printed by Alan Loney in 1975 at his newly founded Hawk Press. There is propriety in the contributors. The writer, Ian Wedde, achieved prominence as a poet and critic, as Loney has; the cover artist, Ralph Hotere, believed strongly in the crosspollination of art and literature, as Loney does. And there is propriety in the title, which poetically evokes Loney’s trajectory in Aotearoa New Zealand. Born in 1940 in Te Awakairangi Lower Hutt, he came to printing through poetry. In 1971, he typeset his first collection, The Bare Remembrance, at Trevor Reeves’s Caveman Press in Ōtepoti Dunedin. Hawk Press was set up at Te Onepoto Taylors Mistake and later travelled with Loney from Ōtautahi Christchurch to the Kāpiti Coast and Ōkiwi Eastbourne. After its closure in 1983, he established further presses in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington and Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. In 1998, he left Aotearoa, crossing Te Tai-o-Rehua Tasman Sea and alighting in Naarm Melbourne, where he settled permanently in 2001.
This article was written prior to the passing of Fred Graham on 9 May 2025. The author, Te Uru Contemporary Gallery and Christchurch Art Gallery acknowledge this loss with deep sadness. Moe mai rā e te Rangatira.
In 2024 I was fortunate to work with senior Māori artist Fred Graham (Ngāti Korokī Kahukura, Tainui) and his whānau to present Fred Graham: Toi Whakaata / Reflections at Te Uru Contemporary Gallery in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Reflecting on Graham’s career, the exhibition brings together works made over the course of almost fifty years between 1965 and 2013.
Disruptive Landscapes: Contemporary Art from Japan includes moving-image works that examine our relationships to the land, whether historical, mythological or contemporary. They reveal how landscapes at once reflect our imagination and endorse national identity and societal structures. Landscapes are the aestheticised and mediated form of our natural surroundings, encoded with politics, cultural memories and belief systems; through distinct framing and composition they assert certain politics and mindsets, such as the notion of an untouched, unoccupied land, or the ideal ecosystem for a site.
Dad was always the arty one.
We didn’t think of it as art, growing up. We just thought of it as him having strong opinions about what looked and sounded good. Music, especially. After school finished each day, he’d crank up the stereo and our home would hum with blues and rock from the 1960s and early 1970s. Cream and the original Fleetwood Mac were forever fighting the drone of the kitchen extractor fan.
For most people, migration is a semi-abstract concept. It’s the fall guy for social issues, the topic of choice for political pundits. For me, it was something I romanticised. Although both of my parents were born in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland I always thought of myself as the child of migrants, as all four of my grandparents were born outside of Aotearoa New Zealand and immigrated here for various reasons at various times. However, it wasn’t until I became a migrant worker myself, after accepting a job in the United States and navigating immigration firsthand, that I realised how difficult moving countries was.