Bone Yard Open Home, Cave Painting 4, Convocation of Eagles is Ōhinehou Lyttelton artist Bill Hammond’s largest single canvas painting. It was completed in 2008 and acquired by Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū in 2021 after the artist’s death earlier that year. This is an important work painted at the height of Hammond’s career.

The painting is a large rectangle of canvas with raw edges on the top and bottom where the fringe of the cloth is matted together with paint. It is held up by eleven nails hammered through the canvas into the Gallery wall. The painterly nature of Hammond’s work is enhanced by long, watery drips of dark blue and gold paint that flow down the canvas as if the artist’s brush was heavily loaded, creating a veil through which we experience the painting.

From left to right, the first element is the dark blue interior of a cave, which positions the viewer looking out. The work’s title is painted on the cave wall in gold in the top left corner. Inside the cave are two adult-sized bird-people painted in black and dark blue with gold tattoo-like markings. Beyond the cave opening, the sky is pale blue and soft gold through long drips of paint. Two bird-people fly red banners above a giant tree stump surrounded by bones that forms the middle of the work. In the final third of the painting, the sky has darkened to night. In the distance, across an expanse of open ground, is a cave with more bird-people inside. Rivulets of gold stream down the canvas from the cave. In the foreground are native trees and, near the edge of the painting a lonely human figure seated on a small mound holds a tall flagpole. The flag is red, dripping with paint.

Hammond’s bird-people stand on two legs and resemble humans until their chest and shoulders flare out like the breast of a bird. From their backs sprout large, feathered wings. Their heads are eagle-like: beaked, with long, feathered scalps and watchful eyes. The artist painted many works featuring these bird-people as his protagonists after a voyage to the uninhabited subantarctic Maungahuka Auckland Islands. Here, the native habitat had not been destroyed like much of the kahere, or forests, of Aotearoa New Zealand, and Hammond was struck by the abundance of thriving birdlife. For him, this was like witnessing a primordial Aotearoa. The human figure staking a claim, the bone yard and the large tree stump all speak of the impact of colonisation on Aotearoa, where people have been the leading cause of birdlife extinction.