Marilynn Webb
Aotearoa New Zealand, b.1937, d.2021
Ngāti Kahu,
Te Roroa,
Māori,
Pākehā
Dark Mountain
- 1976
- Monoprint and etching
- Gift of Holcim (New Zealand) Limited, 2003
- 825 x 637 x 25mm
- 2003/40
Location: Sir Robertson and Lady Stewart Gallery
Tags: monochrome, mountains, shadows, triangles (polygons)
The solemn, night-time landscape depicted in this work is a very personal one. Marilynn Webb made it following the death of her mother, Elizabeth (Lilla) Vaivin Webb, née Turner. Lilla is represented here as Tarawera, a volcanic mountain not far from where Webb grew up in Ōpōtiki, a small town in Te Moana-a-Toi, the Bay of Plenty.
(He Kapuka Oneone – A Handful of Soil, 2025)
Exhibition History
Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022 – 21 July 2024
The night-time landscape depicted in this work is a very personal one. Marilynn Webb made it following the death of her mother and within its abstracted forms she enclosed a representation of her matrilineal whakapapa. This connected Marilynn with Moe Ngaherehere, the 47th signatory to Te Tiriti o Waitangi. The dominant triangle represents Marilynn’s mother, Lilla Vaivin, through the form of Mount Tarawera. At the top of the composition, moonlight gleams through the shifting clouds. In te ao Māori, the moon’s cycle is likened to an opening and closing portal, through which departing spirits return to the origin of life.