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Gretchen Albrecht Banded Orange 1973. Acrylic on canvas. Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, purchased 1974

Paerangi / The Fold in the Sky

Te Wheke

6 April 2020. Posted by Peter Vangioni

The connection between land and sky is important in te ao Māori. In Māori creation, Papatūānuku (the earth mother) was separated from Ranginui (the sky father) by their children, creating Te Ao Mārama, the world of light.

For painter Gretchen Albrecht, the space between land and sky has inspired an extraordinary series of paintings spanning several decades in which she captures the light of the setting sun on the wild untamed beaches and heavily forested ranges to the west of Tāmakimakaurau / Auckland.

In her studio, Albrecht has applied broad, sweeping washes of pure colour – with squeegees rather than brushes – across the surfaces of unprimed canvases laid flat on the floor, stacking horizontal bands of colour to show land, sea and sky in the outstanding light of the setting sun.

Ko tā te Māori, i moe a Ranginui i a Papatūānuku. He mana nui tō tēnei hononga, he hononga pūmau tonu. Heoi, ka taka te wā, ka whakawehea rāua e ā rāua tamariki, nāwai rā, ka hua ko Te Ao Mārama.

Ko te kauwhanga kei waenga i a Rangi rāua ko Papa, koia ko te horopaki i ranga wairua ai a Gretchen Albrecht, i puta ai hoki āna waituhi e mau ana i te tōnga o te rā ki runga i Te Wao Nui a Tiriwā heke iho rā ki Te Moanatāpokopoko-a-Tāwhaki.

I roto i tana whare toi, ka whakatakotoria e Albrecht āna papakōaka mā ki te papa, katahi rā ka whakanikonikohia e a ia ki ngā au kano – ko te hautai kē tana taputapu, kaua ko te paraihe. Ka whakapaepaehia ngā kano hei tohu i te whenua, i te moana, i te rangi, i ngā hī o te rā tō.

Related reading: Te Wheke

Exhibition

Te Wheke: Pathways Across Oceania

3 July 2022

Experience the Gallery’s collection from the perspective of our place in Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, the Pacific Ocean.

Collection

Gretchen Albrecht Banded Orange

Banded Orange is one of a series of paintings Gretchen Albrecht made in the early 1970s inspired by the view looking west from Tāmakimakaurau / Auckland where land, sea and twilit skies collide in simplified, abstract bands of colour. She said: “It was just fantastic. There was this incredible explosion every night of the setting sun going down behind this bar of hills, which became like a black undulating shape. That was my view.”

(Te Wheke, 2020)

Product

Te Wheke: Pathways Across Oceania

Ken Hall, Nathan Pohio, Felicity Milburn, Lara Strongman and Peter Vangioni, with Stephanie Oberg

$19.99

Commentary

Temples for Curious Minds

I want to tell you a story. A ‘curiodyssey’ (which by the way, I thought I’d made up but is the name of an actual museum in California). So, a curiodyssey of happy places, told through the science of wellbeing.

Continued

film

John Henry Menzies - The Stanford Pātaka Cabinet

Commentary

Te Wheke: Pathways Across Oceania

Every few years, the curatorial team at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū embarks on a major rehang of the first-floor collection area. It’s no small undertaking finding fresh ways to combine long-held, well-known works and new acquisitions, looking for combinations that will offer compelling viewing, immersive storytelling and intellectual engagement to our wide and evolving visitor base. This time, director Blair Jackson added another dimension to our task, challenging us to reimagine the physical orientation of the spaces to encourage visitors to interact with the architecture in a completely different way.

Continued

Commentary

The Seas are Rising: So Are We

In Te Ao Māori the whakataukī “He toka tū moana” pays homage to the rock that withstands the sea as a metaphor for human strength in our cultural or political beliefs, whatever may come. But while the rock is steadfast, the octopus Te Wheke is a shape-shifter, canny and malleable.

Continued

Commentary

Where in the World? Placing New Zealand in the Pacific

“It is a strange fact that New Zealand can be literally all at sea in the Pacific Ocean, and yet pay that ocean, and neighbours and relations within it, so little attention.”
— Damon Salesa, Sāmoan historian

“… this small and very British country is producing some honest and lively artists whose eyes open upon a land not at all like England, but whose minds are formed in the living tradition of Western culture.”
— Helen Hitchings, New Zealand gallerist

Continued

Commentary

Identities of Journey and Return

It was the novelty of seeing white people rendered by a Japanese artist that tickled me when I first saw Utagawa Sadahide’s woodblock prints of foreigners in Yokohama in the 1860s. There’s something slightly clumsy about the Westerners’ exaggerated noses and the forced rounding of their eyes. You can sense, in these images, the artist’s struggle to detach himself from the conventions of Japanese art and beauty; his lines waver here, unlike his assertive depictions of long, flat Japanese faces in earlier prints.

Continued