Lonnie Hutchinson
Aotearoa New Zealand, b.1963
Ngāti Kuri,
Ngāi Tahu,
Sāmoan,
Māori,
Pasifika,
Scottish,
English
Sista 1
- 2004
- Woodcut
- Karen Stevenson Collection, presented 2022
- 1015 x 1015mm
- 2022/184
Location: Arcade
The volcanic coastal landscape of Whakaraupō Lyttelton Harbour resonated with Lonnie Hutchinson when she was living and working in Ōhinehou Lyttelton during 2002 and 2003. Her studio at the time looked down the harbour to the peaks known as the Seven Sisters, rising majestically above Ōhinetahi Governors Bay and Allandale in the distance. It was a view that inspired her. “I feel passionately fortunate that I make art in such an environment. For me this is a spiritual journey of returning to the landscape of my tīpuna.” Hutchinson made a large seven-piece work ‘Sista7’ in response to her relationship with this landscape, following it up with a series of woodcuts including this one, Sista 1. Two koru forms, strikingly rendered in black on white, are bonded together, reaching up. They represent one of the peaks that rise up above Whakaraupō.
(He Kapuka Oneone – A Handful of Soil, 2025)
Exhibition History
Die Cuts and Derivations, 11 March – 2 July 2023](https://christchurchartgallery.org.nz/exhibitions/die-cuts-and-derivations)
Lonnie Hutchinson embeds the spiritual and cultural values of her Samoan and Ngāi Tahu heritage into her practice, which ranges from sculpture to cut-out works made of paper or acrylic. In Sista 1, the positive and negative elements of the woodcut recall the fundamentals of Polynesian and Māori design. It is a continuation of an earlier work, Sista7 (2003), from which Hutchinson drew the motifs to create cut outs that local printmaker Marian Maguire photographed and turned into a series of prints. The rhythm of the original building-paper folds and the elegant pattern recall tukutuku, hiapo and tivaevae. Hutchinson made Sista7 while living in the port town of Ōhinehou Lyttelton, with a view of the volcanic range known as the Seven Sisters running along the back of Ōhinetahi Governors Bay. This work too, carries with it the sense of a landscape.