TJ McNamara: Raw emotion drives real frontier art

Opinion

Sometimes painting in New Zealand is real frontier art. It is raw and unsophisticated, driven by compelling emotions, dry, hard and unsubtle, and elegance is never a consideration.

There are two such exhibitions this week. One is by veteran painter Robyn Kahukiwa at Warwick Henderson Gallery in Parnell. Her work is about Maori and the interaction of Maori and Pakeha.

The paintings that feature only Maori are strong and simple. They make use of stylisation derived from carving and of the forceful, striking design of the Maori flag.

The simplified features of Rua, in the Haki Series, confer a direct gaze on the demi-god and a classical monumentality.

Three fingers and three toes as a design feature lift Tahi from the same series into the realm of myth.

These works have a poster-like power but things become much more mixed in Te Waka Huia, where a couple support a treasured feather box. The faces are stylised but the hands supporting the box are more naturalistic and the male is wearing a hood that has become a modern urban trademark. The subject is hard to read because it is difficult to know whether the feather box is being lifted up or drawn down.

Symbolism is even more mixed in Anahera, though ultimately it may make it the single most effective painting in the show. A barefoot Maori angel complete with halo and wings stands on an island flourishing a mere in her right hand and a cross in her left. The idea is that conflicting traditions and emotions are both in their way gifts.

The two very large paintings that dominate the exhibition and provide the title, Power to Define, share with the rest the dry manner of painting and awkward drawing but are charged with much more aggressive symbolism set between landscape in the background and skulls in front.

In one, a Maori stomping in a dance has a great circular wound in his chest with the surgical clamps still hanging from it.

An academic beside him holds the heart. Then there is the Superwoman invented by the artist with a koru on her headband supporting a naked blond Pakeha figure who has just given birth and is still bleeding. The support is tenderly given.

Another academic, magnifying glass in hand, holds a tattooed head over a young Maori girl who is studying history. A lacerated body is behind them and a photographer captures the scene. The Beehive and the police are in the background.

The work owes a lot to wall painting and popular art and the second big painting, called Resistance, features a hooded youngster with a spray can. Again there is bloody birth, the Superwoman and the flag, a mobile phone and a mere. Samuel Marsden preaches in the background.

The politics, emotions and values are clear but laboured and leave no room for complexity or argument.

Remarkably, the paintings by Matt Hunt at Ivan Anthony are similar in style and although far different in politics and vision the emotional impact is much the same.

These paintings, called Battle for the World Hotel, postulate the idea that the world is controlled by shape-shifters who are reptiles but often take the form of humans. These controllers are matched by visions of bliss, Elysian Fields where the lion lies down with the lamb.

A mass of images that remotely recall the visions of Hieronymus Bosch are peopled by figures that are not naively but clumsily drawn as if draughtsmanship did not matter but only the idea they embody.

The most obvious of these visions is Reptilian Future Cop Indoctrination, where a lizard works an apparatus that establishes the values of a couch potato drinking beer. Inevitably and disapprovingly, there is rugby.

Much more effective is Snowtopian Annunciation where a prevailing light blue unifies the painting. At the top, Mary is assumed into heaven alongside a bull.

There is a crucifixion on a hill and an angel of the Annunciation borrowed from Rubens striding through the centre towards a space hero with bear's head and butterfly wings. Sheep and rabbits abound and there is room for a harpist.

The painting that gives the title to the show has a puppet politician worked by a green reptile in an apocalyptic landscape lit by lightning piled with dollar bills and invaded by a tank with a cow's head, a shark and a gargoyle fighting a cowboy mounted on Pegasus.

These intriguing visions have little commentaries in pencil incorporated in them but remain difficult to unravel and are too diffuse to make much impact as a whole.

There is also a shark in the most outstanding work in the exhibition by Tanya Blong at the Lane Gallery. The piece is called Twelve Miles Beneath the Moon and gives its name to the show. It is a big sculpture carved in macrocarpa and shows a simple boat with a figure pointing vigorously forward and a shark driving in the same direction. The whole is balanced by a tall vertical stem.

The work is simply carved without much detail and uses the weight of the chunky wood to make it monumental. It suggests life driving forward under an impulse and powerful natural forces.

Elsewhere in the show heads are reduced to big simplified ovals and the boat shape is ever-present, suggesting journeying of the mind and heart. The boats, heads and figures are all associated with birds or fish. The forms are simple and weighty. They sit solidly on a base and rise high as totems.

One fine work, Living Sea Marker, is pushed slightly off centre which gives it a special tension. Two of the pieces cast in bronze are very effective but it is the choppy sculptures vigorously hacked from big trunks of macrocarpa that really give this show its particular force.


AT THE GALLERIES

What: Power to Define, by Robyn Kahukiwa
Where and when: Warwick Henderson Gallery, 32 Bath St, Parnell, to Oct 14
TJ says: Paintings full of passionate indignation about the present and historical treatment of Maori.

What: Battle for the World Hotel, by Matt Hunt
Where and when: Ivan Anthony, 312 K Rd, to Oct 24
TJ says: A wild-eyed view of the world as dictated by hidden forces of reptiles conveyed by spacious paintings full of intriguing details.

What: Twelve Miles Beneath the Moon, by Tanya Blong
Where and when: Lane Gallery, 33 Victoria St East, to Oct 17
TJ says: Big, plainly carved wooden sculpture showing voyaging through life and nature joined by several similar bronzes.

For gallery listings, see www.nzherald.co.nz/go/artlistings