Essays & Articles

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  ALBRECHT, Gretchen, 1943-

  Early Morning Rising (Painting)

  Gretchen Albrecht’s breakthrough into complete abstraction coincided with a move to bushy Titirangi in the 1972-73.

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  AMITUANAI, Edith, 1980-

  Monsieur Murphy Pavihi Tavele, from Dejeuner (Pacific)

  During 2006, Edith Amituanai visited France and Italy as part of a Creative New Zealandfunded five-week project to photograph professional rugby players. Each of her subjects had a Pasifika background, and many of them were her relatives or friends. The theme for her work at that time was “third wave” migration, as the children or grandchildren of people who emigrated from the Pacific Islands to New Zealand in the twentieth century, started to move back out into the world to seek new opportunities.

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  AMITUANAI, Edith, 1980-

  The Amituanui Family Lotu, from Ioka (Pacific)

  It has been an exciting few years for emerging artist Edith Amituanai (nee Sagapolu), an Elam postgraduate student who had her first solo exhibition only a few years ago at Anna Miles Gallery in 2005.

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  BAMBURY, Stephen, 1951-

  Insert Cross IC089321 (Painting)

  After studying at the Elam School of Fine Arts in the 1970s, Stephen Bambury travelled to North America. There he encountered paintings by the Russian artist Kazimir Malevich who had undertaken “a desperate struggle to free art from the ballast of the objective world” by using basic motifs: the square, the circle and the cross. This last shape was a loaded sign but also an exercise in pure geometry, dividing the canvas into nine squares. As many geometrical abstractionists have observed, the cross is the mother of all grids.

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  BINNEY, Don, 1940-

  In the Lee of a Looted Island (Painting)

  Interviewed for the May 1966 edition of the Barry Lett newsletter to coincide with his Auckland Festival exhibition, Don Binney responded affirmatively when asked if there was a peculiar sort of light in New Zealand that influenced his way of seeing. The interviewer was summarising Auckland Art Gallery director Peter Tomory’s introduction to a catalogue of painting shown at the Commonwealth Institute in London in 1965: “in these islands, the Pacific light burns and bleaches, so that in high summer, black and white predominate”. Don had only been out of the country a few times to Australia, but he reported “seeing New Zealand for the first time after two weeks away…one had the impression of an iron land, strong and clear in this light.” As a fiercely nationalist painter, Don Binney laboured to try and convey the power and simplicity of that vision.

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  CASTLE, Len, 1924-2011

  Volcanic Series - vessel (Ceramic)

  As a young science teacher living and working on the Auckland volcanic field, Len Castle made great use of lava tubes and caves, and took field trips to Rangitoto. He was delighted when Ruapehu’s boisterous activity for several months in 1945 briefly eclipsed war reports from the Pacific theatre. Like the painter Colin McCahon who was studying the line drawings of landforms produced by Charles Cotton at this same time, Len married aesthetic sensibilities with an interest in geomorphology.

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  CLEAVIN, Barry, 1939-

  The Garden (Print)

  Not many New Zealand artists can lay claim to having infiltrated hundreds of private homes and public gallery collections with their work.

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  CULBERT, Bill, 1935-

  Decanter, London (Photograph)

  The unlikely pairing of wine and filament light bulbs has long been a recurring motif in the highly sociable work of Bill Culbert, as has the fluorescent tube, all of which act as metaphor and evidence of the ways we think about light, energy and materials.

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  DRIVER, Don, 1930-2011

  Untitled Construction (Construction)

  Often mistaken for part of the architecture, Don Driver’s Untitled Construction (1982) is both simple and spectacular.

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  FAHEY, Jacqueline, 1929-

  Barbara Speaks to Mum (Painting)

  With her husband the eminent psychiatrist Fraser McDonald, Jacqueline Fahey lived her married life in hospital houses until 1984.

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  FISHER, Charlotte, 1959-

  Fathom (Sculpture)

  The design for this sculpture, originally titled She Shore, was an entry in the competition for a sculpture to be sited at the back of the newly opened Kenneth Myers Centre in 2001.

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  FRIZZELL, Dick, 1943-

  Workers on Construction Site (Mural)

  Developing the new Conference Centre for the University in 1982, architects Kingston Reynolds Thom and Allardice worked with architectural drawing lecturer Pat Hanly to brighten the place up.

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  GOOD, Roy, 1945-

  An Episode of Events (Painting)

  Playing off a dominant circle shape against chevrons and triangles in a square ground, this work was an experiment by the artist in combining ideas about geometric pattern painting into “one grand pictorial assembly”.

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  HASTINGS-MCFALL, Niki, 1959-

  Yellow Lei-light - triptych (Pacific)

  Golden and good humoured, Niki HastingsMcFall’s floral tribute to her Samoan heritage has greeted tides of students and staff since the opening of the Kate Edger Information Commons in 2003.

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  HELLYAR, Christine, 1947-

  Armlet (Sculpture)

  Armlets are decorative bands usually worn above the bicep and made from a precious material such as gold or silver. Why then have these three bronze sculptures been given that title?

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  JENKINSON, Megan, 1958-

  Prudentia endeavours to construct a Model of Plato's Ideal State with the Building Blocks of Tombs of the Dead Kings (Photograph)

  Cutting out photographed sets of printer’s type with embroidery scissors to form the names of New Zealand’s biggest corporations in 1986, Megan Jenkinson presciently depicted the flimsy basis for the sharemarket speculation which would lead to the crash of October 1987. As Brett Wilkinson, a young executive with Rainbow Corporation, would later explain, “The listed companies [were] geared up and reported valuations largely based on dubious valuations. It was one giant pyramid game.”

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  KAVANAGH, John, 1903-1984

  Portrait of Sir Douglas Robb (Painting)

  Painted the year after Douglas Robb was knighted for services to medicine, this work shows the maverick medico at ease in his study, surrounded by his precious book collection. Light falls on his facial features and creates a kind of halo effect behind his head. If the painter seems to have visualised this medical statesman as the patron saint of the New Zealand health system, it was with good cause – he had been campaigning for better public health for over 20 years.

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  KIHARA, Shigeyuki

  Maui Ti'eti'e Talaga - How Maui obtained Samoa's first fire, from the series Vavau - Tales from Ancient Samoa (Pacific)

  As a teenager, Shigeyuki Kihara was sent in the late 1980s from the balmy climes of Samoa to the Marist school, St Patrick’s Silverstream in Upper Hutt, for secondary education.

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  KILLEEN, Richard, 1946-

  Man, Window and Awning (Painting)

  Teaching him at the Elam School of Fine Arts, Colin McCahon noticed that Richard Killeen’s compositions seemed assembled from separate parts, like jigsaw puzzle pieces. This one even takes its title from the three significant features in it, and orders them in a descending hierarchy of importance. Richard’s subject matter is both realistic and abstract, and his work allows a reading of both modes. Yet if painting in the Realist tradition was once considered a window onto the world, Richard is showing in this work that the opening is now closed. His stylised figure has become a flattened shape pasted over the background, casting little shadow. Is the Realist mode just the alibi for the investigation of figure and field with image and pattern, or does narrative linger on?

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  LEE, Jae Hoon, 1973-

  Trekking (Photograph)

  Every year, thousands of tourists flock in summer to Nepal, a landlocked country in Southern India between China and India.

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  MCLEOD, Andrew, 1976-

  Pink and Green Abstraction with Dragon (Painting)

  Andrew McLeod is renowned for his magpie eye with complex compositions combining eclectic images into detailed arrangements. It is the sort of eye that can be richly nourished in the digital era of Wikipedia and Google image search, where anyone can be an instant expert and new obsessions can be quickly sated with a wealth of visual material, although all this is little use without the finely honed sensibilities of a mature artist. Combined with this ease of information accessibility is the ability to cut-and-paste or manipulate a variety of sources using computer-aided design programmes. All this may make it easier to be an artist with an eclectic set of influences, from children’s book illustrations to the gothic visual culture of black metal music, although an everexpanding set of options does not necessarily make work any easier.

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  MCWHANNELL, Richard, 1952-

  Too Fast for Love (Painting)

  Determined to succeed as a figure painter in a period dominated by abstraction, Richard McWhannell is a contemporary artist whose painting has lived by its own rules during his 35-year career.

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  MILLAR, Judy, 1957-

  Simon-Peter (Painting)

  Thousands of renowned (and aspiring) artists, curators, writers, collectors, and anyone else significantly interested in contemporary art recently converged from around the world for the opening of the 53rd Venice Biennale. In addition to the main international exhibition, Making Worlds, which features 90 artists, there are 77 countries with their own pavilions and 44 collateral events from a range of organisations. Included in the collateral exhibition Glasstress is Elam School of Fine Arts graduate Hye Rim Lee, who appears alongside such international luminaries as Louise Bourgeois and Mona Hatoum. This year Creative New Zealand has selected two artists to represent New Zealand: Francis Upritchard and Judy Millar. Millar’s project Giraffe-Bottle-Gun will be installed in Santa Maria Maddalena, the only circular church in Venice, which has existed on the site in various forms since at least 1222. Giraffe-Bottle-Gun, named from oddly-shaped long-necked canvases leaning against the walls surrounding the large looping installation at the heart of the installation, interrupts the spaces between the viewer, the architecture and the art.

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  MORISON, Julia, 1952-

  RoCoco (Construction)

  Creating her largest art work to date, a huge 104-part painting to cap off her survey show, a loop around a loop, at Christchurch Art Gallery in 2006, Julia Morison titled the behemoth “Gargantua’s petticoat” after the garments mentioned in Francois Rabelais’ 1534 novel. Rabelais describes how the men and women of the religious order Theleme were appareled: “next to their smock they put on the pretty kirtle or vasquin of pure silk camlet; above that went the taffety or tabby farthingale, of white, red, tawny, grey, or of any other colour.”

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  MRKUSICH, Milan, 1925-

  Painting Ochre (Painting)

  In June 1949, the School of Architecture hosted Milan Mrkusich’s first-ever public showing of paintings and drawings. Sixty years later The University of Auckland is again the venue for a new milestone in Mrkusich’s career. The exhibition Trans-Form: the abstract art of Milan Mrkusich has been curated for the Gus Fisher Gallery by Ed Hanfling and Alan Wright, research associates of the Art History Department, to mark the publication of their Auckland University Press book, Mrkusich: The Art of Transformation.

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  NEAL, Alexis

  Treasured (Maori)

  Mixed media artist Alexis Neal is consistently drawn to depicting objects of taonga as she sees them possessing a wairua or spirit beyond their physical presence. The treasures included in the semi-circular mezzotint entitled Treasured (1997) include ear pendants, a carved piece of bone and a shell necklace. These are not cheap, throw-away items of jewellery purchased from a ubiquitous mall jewellery store but are objects to be worn, treasured and adored.

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  NICHOLLS, Peter, 1936-

  Measure (Sculpture)

  Back in June 1975, the University’s Works Committee resolved to provide for “fine arts embellishments of new buildings and their precinct” and allocated funds for the acquisition of art works as part of building contracts. The Council recommended the adoption of the Works Registrar’s policy that “a realistic allowance for such work would be one-half percent for Government buildings but that where buildings of national or prime community importance are involved allowance of up to one-and-a-half percent would be more appropriate”. Commissioning of fine art for specific sites around the University resulted in the Medical School Link building on the University’s Grafton Campus being the first to benefit from the new policy.

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  O'BRIEN, Gregory, 1961-

  And this also is the Point of Saying Goodbye (Drawing)

  part of a BA at The University of Auckland, and published his first illustrations (done to accompany "Paris", a poem by C.K. Stead and published by Auckland University Press) in 1984. After graduation that year, he published his own poems in literary journals in Australia, including Meanjin and Scripsi, as well as in Island, Sport and Landfall in New Zealand. These poems were brought together with drawings in a single book, Location of the Least Person, which was published by Auckland University Press in 1987, and led to him winning the Frank Sargeson Fellowship the next year. This award brought with it residency in the flat above the George Fraser Gallery, and occasioned his first meeting with the Hungarian photographer Mari Mahr, who exhibited there in 1988.

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  PARKER, John, 1944-

  # 85, a pot (Applied Arts)

  When potter John Parker began making a name for himself in the 1970s, the clean, manufactured look of mass-produced Crown Lynn ceramics was losing its fashionable status and was certainly not to be taken seriously by potters.

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  PARKER, John, 1944-

  # 103, a pot (Applied Arts)

  When potter John Parker began making a name for himself in the 1970s, the clean, manufactured look of mass-produced Crown Lynn ceramics was losing its fashionable status and was certainly not to be taken seriously by potters.

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  REIHANA, Lisa, 1964-

  Captain James Cook - Female (In Pursuit of Venus) (Photograph)

  Artist and 2017 Distinguished Alumna Lisa Reihana is currently representing New Zealand at the 57th Venice Biennale in Italy with a panoramic video installation entitled Emissaries. It is her most ambitious project in a long, illustrious and innovative career with digital media. Ten years in the making, Emissaries is a remarkably complex digital animation that has undergone a number of modifications for the Biennale since it was last shown in Auckland, including incorporating Aboriginal figures.

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  SCHOON, Theo, 1915-1985

  Manaia Mania B (Print)

  Printed by Theo Schoon in Kees Hos’s studio in Auckland in 1965, this collograph was made by gluing the cut-out patterns onto wood, and then applying ink with a paintbrush before pressing paper down on top. Captured by Bauhaus ideas which emphasised the equality of art and craft, Schoon had studied only briefly at the Rotterdam Art Academy and Canterbury College School of Art, before beginning his own journey of intrepid exploration of artistic media.

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  SCOTT, Ian, 1945-

  Lattice No.63 (Painting)

  Constituting a system that became a style, Ian Scott’s lattices remain his signature works. His “basic over-and-under pattern” paintings went into production in 1976, after a decade of Girlie paintings. Like an industrial product, each lattice suggests a limitless number of colour ways, but Scott drew the line on the series in 1982 after making over 200 sequentially numbered variations on the idea. Now that he is again investigating the pictorial possibilities of scantily-clad girls, Scott rarely makes a lattice painting. When he does, the resulting interlace is like a puzzle solved: a two-dimensional Rubik’s cube. The compositions are tricky but seem deceptively simple: a few bands of pure acrylic colour laid down over a square white canvas ground.

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  SMITH, Maurice K., 1926-

  'I'conoclast (Painting)

  As well as meaning a destroyer of religious images or sacred images, the word “iconoclast” can be used to describe a person who contravenes established or traditional principles and laws. A champion of vernacular design in architecture who has lived in Massachusetts since 1958, Maurice Smith has been described as “too radical for [New Zealand’s] conservative establishment” by his former colleague Tony Watkins.

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  TODD, Yvonne, 1973-

  Envy Log (Photograph)

  DISTURBING AND ALLURING "Envy Log" is example of the way Yvonne Todd's photography can draw you in with the promise of a scandalous story but leave you with nothing more than unresolved plot twists. Here she presents us with a young girl sitting slumped and resigned in a wheelchair, looking towards us with an inquisitive, rather sullen gaze. Behind her stands a woman whose eyes we cannot meet, her face veiled in dark shadow.

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  TODD, Yvonne, 1973-

  Valley Candle (Photograph)

  With a background as a commercial photographer and shop assistant in a wig salon, Yvonne Todd is well versed in artifice and masquerade. She completed her BFA at Elam School of Fine Arts in 2001, the year before she won New Zealand’s art world’s highest art accolade, the Walters Prize, awarded to her by Venice Biennale curator Harald Szeeman. Her Sea of Tranquility series from that year posed beauty consultants collected up from Auckland department stores against black backgrounds like so many Stepford Wives. She has continued to foreground the performance of femininity ever since, although her practice is centred more generally on the business of image-making itself.

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  TOLE, Charles, 1903-1988

  Decoration 3 (Painting)

  Two Auckland brothers, John and Charles Tole, are the northern equivalent of Rita Angus. Neither of them had any formal art school training although they both associated with the Elam painter John Weeks (1886-1975). The Tole brothers lived together at 12 Seaview Road in Remuera and developed their own credo in art which they revealed to University of Auckland’s Kurt von Meier in 1964: “We have always been intensely interested in modern developments in style and technique, yet we think these elements should not be arbitrarily or consciously striven for but should emerge and flow freely from the subject matter and from the artist’s creative intuition towards the expression and communication of his message.”

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  WHITE, Robin, 1946-

  Mana Railway Station (Print)

  Dame Robin White’s portrayals of New Zealand and the Pacific are instantly recognisable. Although the word is often overused, these are iconic images, especially because her subject matter is usually anything but. Rather than grand buildings and sweeping landscapes, she prefers quiet unassuming structures like the Maketu Fish’n Chip Shop or the Portobello Pub; simple architecture that is ubiquitous. But they’re always specific settings that bring a personal response to a place, usually including a local occupant, such as the painting of Sam Hunt at Bottle Creek that hangs in the General Library, or the more autobiographical This is me at Kaitangata. They remind us that these are social places used by people and bring a human scale to the landscape. Mana Railway Station continues in this vein and perhaps pays homage to the famous painting of Cass railway station by Rita Angus, an artist whose clarity of depiction was an important influence on White.

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  WILLIAMS, Mervyn, 1940-

  Midas Finds his Soul (Print)

  Established in 1964 by Auckland gallerist Kees Hos and philanthropist Dr Walter Auburn, the New Zealand Print Council flourished for over a decade before slowly going into eclipse. Guaranteed exhibitions in the nation’s major public galleries as members, artists quickly joined. Mervyn Williams, a Whakatane-born artist who had studied painting at Elam part-time in 1957 and 1958, but who never completed his diploma, was one of the first to take up membership. Working as a dinnerware designer for Crown Lynn in West Auckland alongside Frank Carpay, he had met immigrant artist Ted Dutch who taught him how to make serigraphs or silkscreen prints.

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  WILLIAMS, Mervyn, 1940-

  Midas Finds his Soul (Print)

  Established in 1964 by Auckland gallerist Kees Hos and philanthropist Dr Walter Auburn, the New Zealand Print Council flourished for over a decade before slowly going into eclipse. Guaranteed exhibitions in the nation’s major public galleries as members, artists quickly joined. Mervyn Williams, a Whakatane-born artist who had studied painting at Elam part-time in 1957 and 1958, but who never completed his diploma, was one of the first to take up membership. Working as a dinnerware designer for Crown Lynn in West Auckland alongside Frank Carpay, he had met immigrant artist Ted Dutch who taught him how to make serigraphs or silkscreen prints.

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