B.
Thinking / feeling my way in
Behind the scenes
"What abstract painting can do better than anything else is [evoke] that sense of recognition that's indefinite yet ecstatic at the same time. It's getting to the emotional underpinning that we all share, that is the substitute for the common or religious belief. I believe abstraction can do that."
Frank Stella said this in 1986, and when I first read it I wasn't sure, yet attracted to its statement at the same time. Relativist, subject centred politics raced around my head, asking but my emotional understanding is not the same as yours, love is a cultural concept, isn't this just more white men speaking for others through abstraction? But there's something in this I believe too, and that gets to the heart of how I've been able to begin this project for Christchurch. I got stuck, and scared. Because I didn't go through the earthquake; I didn't experience it. And so what can I say in response to it, after it? I know a lot of artists feel this sense with Christchurch, an almost 'how dare I'. But if we don't talk to you, then aren't we just leaving you alone? Don't we have to try with the difficult stuff too?
This quote got me because I had just realised that the way I need to approach this is to value my own experiences of grief, of loss, of anger, of joy, hope, recovery. And let them inform what I'm doing. Because although all our experiences are different which make us feel these things, perhaps the feelings, the processes, have something in common. There is a strange similarity and total difference which exist at the same time. We can't escape the process.
Related
Exhibition
Sian Torrington: How you have held things
1 June – 14 July 2013
Wellington-based artist Sian Torrington's site-specific sculptural installation combined ideas, images and materials that related to life in post-quake Christchurch
Collection
Ralph Hotere Malady Panels
A poem by Bill Manhire was the inspiration for this series of paintings. It repeated the words ‘malady’, ‘melody’ and ‘my lady’ and the repetition, simplicity and strong emotion of the poem appealed to Ralph Hotere. ‘Melody’ and ‘malady’ come together in ‘my lady’, suggesting that deep-felt love can be both a sickness and a delight.
The fine circles in the paintings suggest the fragility of love, and their intense colour celebrates its beauty. Hotere made several works based on this poem during the early 1970s.
Hotere was born in Taikarawa, Northland, and was widely regarded as one of New Zealand’s greatest living artists. He is represented in public and private collections throughout New Zealand. He lived at Port Chalmers near Dunedin.
Collection
Colin McCahon Tomorrow will be the same but not as this is
In April 1958 Colin McCahon travelled to the US, responding both to the expansiveness of the American landscape and to the modern American painting that he saw in museums. On his return, his works increased in scale while economising in gesture: the landscape elements of Tomorrow have been reduced to a horizon and lowering sky, with the land bisected by a grey river. He converted his Titirangi garage into a studio, and built an extra bedroom for his children underneath. The studio was gloomy – there was only one small side window for light when the garage door was closed – but it precipitated dozens of new works. Tomorrow was an unfortunate painting, said McCahon, ‘in that it wouldn’t go right, and I got madder and madder. I hurled a whole lovely quart tin of black Dulux at the board and reconstructed the painting out of the mess.’ The black paint (a commercial flooring paint, mixed with sand) dripped down the surface of the work and ran between wide cracks in the studio floorboards, ruining clothes and bed linen in his sons’ room below. He finally finished the painting in May 1959.
(March 2018)