This Is New Zealand Reflects on Who We Thought We Were, Who We Think We Are

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This Is New Zealand Reflects on Who We Thought We Were, Who We Think We Are curated by Robert Leonard and Aaron Lister, with Moya Lawson First, a Word from the CuratorsRobert Leonard . .and . Aaron Lister Teasing out connections between images, ideology, and identity, our exhibition This Is New Zealand reflects on who we thought we were, who we think we are. Taking a critical look at stories we’ve told ourselves and others, it asks: Who and what have been included and excluded? And who is this mythical ‘we’? This Is New Zealand emerged out of our thinking about New Zealand’s participation in the Venice Biennale. New Zealand has been going to the Biennale since 2001, and it looms large for our art scene. The Biennale is the world’s largest, most important, and longest-running regular contemporary-art mega-show, and our participation declares our desire to be ‘international’, to be part of the wider art discussion. However, some of the artists we have sent to Venice have taken it as an opportunity to tackle old questions Lisa Reihana (sunglasses) and the Governor-General, of national identity, riffing on the Biennale’s Her Excellency the Rt. Hon. Dame Patsy Reddy (cloak), arrive in style on the Disdotona—a giant old-school national-pavilion structure. Our gondola, propelled by eighteen rowers from the show includes three examples from Venice. Canottieri Querini Rowing Club—for the opening of Reihana’s exhibition Emissaries, New Zealand Michael Stevenson’s 2003 project This Is pavilion, Venice Biennale, 10 May 2017. ‘It was the Trekka looks like a belated trade display wonderful coming down the Grand Canal. I felt like a queen’, said Reihana. PHOTO Michael C. Hall for a New Zealand car. Michael Parekōwhai’s carved piano, He Kōrero Pūrākau mō te PREVIOUS The site of the New Zealand restaurant, Awanui o te Motu: Story of a New Zealand Expo ’70, Osaka, 1968; Evening Post Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington. River, was the centrepiece of his 2011 show 5 On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer. And, to further fudge the distinction between And there’s a component from Simon art and culture, we’ve added in early New Denny’s 2015 show, Secret Power, which Zealand tourism posters, and some TV ads presented his inquiry into the Snowden and films. Plus, in Civic Square, we’re flying leaks and New Zealand’s involvement in our triumphant flag alongside its recent the Five Eyes alliance as an official state- challengers. sanctioned project. This Is New Zealand scratches the The Venice Biennale relates to the surface to explore some of the ways that art tradition of World’s Fairs and Expos, which and artists have addressed the perennial typically present the world nation by nation, theme of national identity. It tracks the way each paying its own way. So, our next some images have become archetypal, thought was to place our three New Zealand echoing through time, entrenching the Venice works into conversation with works national-image repertoire. The use of Māori that have been made to represent New and Māori imagery in the myriad ways Zealand in such shows and in other official New Zealand has represented itself has diplomatic contexts. These include two long been a thorny issue. This show provides New Zealand history paintings that Marcus an opportunity to consider where—or King made for the 1939 New York World’s if—presumptuous appropriation ends and Fair (one of which has become the most biculturalism begins. At a time when notions famous image of the signing of the Treaty of what New Zealand is or can be are being of Waitangi). There’s John Drawbridge’s debated and recalibrated as never before, abstracted New Zealand–landscape mural our show considers the role art has played and Inia Te Wiata’s Pouihi, made for New in giving visual form to abstract ideas about Zealand House in London in the 1960s. And the nation. there are works from New Zealand’s pavilion Our title This Is New Zealand is at Expo ’70 in Osaka: Hugh Macdonald’s rhetorical—a provocation. ‘Why no question spectacular three-screen film (which gives mark?’ All our exhibits are skewed views our show its name) and Green Are the that exclude more than they include. Islands, a mass performance involving the However, you could also say that these New Zealand Ballet, Paratene Matchitt, works, collectively, in their very exclusions Douglas Lilburn, and others. We’ve also and distortions, speak of tensions that included two suites of photographs—by define our place. Perhaps this bumpy, Fiona Pardington and Michael Parekōwhai— warts-and-all compilation of mixed that our Government gave to the Musée du messages really is New Zealand. We’ll Quai Branly, Paris, in 2006. leave that for you, our fellow citizens, to To round out the show, there are determine. Anyone for a referendum? research-based projects exploring national iconography by Simon Denny, Gavin Hipkins, Bronwyn Holloway-Smith, and Emil McAvoy. Air New Zealand’s Hobbit plane made its debut in 2012, prior to the release of the first movie in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit film trilogy. 6 The Show 1939 Marcus King New York World’s Fair When Marcus King exhibited two paintings in the future-themed 1939 New York World’s Fair, ‘the Wonderland of the Pacific’ met ‘the World of Tomorrow’. King was one of the artists employed by the New Zealand Tourism Department around this time to create appealing images of a prosperous nation in the lead-up to its centenary celebrations. King’s The Arrival: The Landing of the Maoris (1938) is a postscript to Charles F. Goldie and Louis John Steele’s famous The Arrival of the Maoris in New Zealand (1898), which depicts, with gruesome excess, that perilous voyage across the Pacific. King, instead, shows us the landing, as thirsty Māori mariners set foot in a softly-lit arcadia. King’s The Signing of the Treaty of Waitangi (1938) makes a grand history painting out of the nation’s foundational moment. Ngāpuhi chief Tāmati Wāka Nene signs the Treaty in front of Captain William Hobson and other witnesses. Widely reproduced ever since, it has become the standard image of the event. In their original context, the World’s Fair, the paintings were companion pieces— ‘before’ and ‘after’—emphasising the country’s cultural and political maturation. For King, the heroic Māori have become civilised through contact with the British. Seeing the benefits offered by the colonial project, they have signed up to form the modern nation. While looking to the future, King overwrites the past. Marcus King The Arrival: The Landing of the Maoris in Aaron Lister New Zealand 1938 and The Signing of the Treaty of Waitangi 1938 1920s–1960s Tourism Posters In 1901, New Zealand established the world’s first government Tourism Department, which quickly claimed the country’s geography and Māori culture as unique selling points. For decades, posters were an efficient way to promote the country, locally and to the world. New Zealand was cast as ‘A Scenic Wonderland’, ‘Playground of the Pacific’, ‘Maoriland’, ‘Brighter Britain of the South’, ‘God’s Custodian’, and ‘A World in Itself’. Talented artists like Leonard Mitchell, Marcus King, and Howard Mallitte were enlisted to furnish the evidence. The 1930s were a high point, as posters offered appealing images of a nation coming of age, ready to celebrate its impending centenary. The frequent use of Māori imagery served the prevailing myth that our European-Indigenous relations were the best in the world (comparatively). The self image of a young nation was crystallised in the optimistic and stripped-back graphic style of these posters. These windows onto Elysium introduced a visual language that stuck. Moya Lawson Leonard Mitchell Wahine: New Zealand Centennial Exhibition 1939 12 E. Waters New Zealand via Panama Canal c.1930 George Bridgman New Zealand 1939 Unknown Rotorua c.1950 Marcus King South Westland c.1955 Howard Mallitte Milford Sound c.1955 Arthur Thompson Your New Zealand Holiday, Fly TEAL c.1960 Dennis Beytagh New Zealand 1960 14 1963– New Zealand House, London Opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1963, New Opera singer Inia Te Wiata recognised the Zealand House was the first skyscraper built Mural’s power. Drawbridge recalled working in London after World War Two. Constructed on it one night when ‘Out of the darkness on the site of a former hotel bombed came Inia Te Wiata … He said … no, he sung during the Blitz, this ultra-modern building … that he saw New Zealand in my work’. symbolised New Zealand’s aspirations—the A few years earlier, Te Wiata had noticed role it saw for itself as a progressive, modern something else—the glaring absence of nation. It was also ‘a home away from home’, Māori art in the plans for New Zealand House. where expat New Zealanders could meet and He made a bold pitch—he would make a even pick up their mail. carving for the foyer. While trained by master Artists were commissioned to create carver Piri Poutapu, Te Wiata wasn’t known works for the building. John Drawbridge was as a carver and hadn’t picked up a chisel an obvious choice. His organic, nature-based in decades. He was, however, one of New abstraction had found success in London. Zealand’s most successful cultural exports. It exemplified a new international language As well as singing at the Royal Opera House of painting, which, in this context, was also and at the Queen’s coronation, he acted. He able to conjure ‘the spirit of New Zealand’. played a Māori chief in an episode of the TV Drawbridge’s fifteen-metre New Zealand show Sergeant Cork, written by expat New House Mural (1963) spills across ten panels, Zealander Bruce Stewart.
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