Bird's-eye views of NZ life and history

By T.J. McNAMARA

The splendid Two Emperors exhibition that fills the upper floor of Auckland Art Gallery is drawn from treasures of the immensely long history of China. Across the road on the second floor of the New Gallery is another fascinating exhibition inspired by the comparatively short history of Aotearoa.

The exhibition, Birds: Arrivals and Departures, suggests the way some birds are native, others are migratory and some arrive as guests and remain, can be metaphors for human behaviour.

The gallery's policy in recent years has been to bring works out of storage, to rotate their treasures for the public view. The policy has been applied energetically and works well. The collections are rich and extensive and should be a matter of great civic pride.

This exhibition, which runs until February 16, is an inspired piece of curating by Ngahiraka Mason, the gallery's curator of Maori art. The pillars of the gallery have apposite quotations by poets and songwriters. The explanatory notes on each work are relevant and helpful and the choice of works and their juxtaposition is original and fascinating.

It is a show that should be widely visited and studied carefully for the light it throws on who we are, what we were and who we might be. And it contains some damn fine art.

It is good to see some old favourites. When you come up the stairs, the first thing to greet you is a sculpture by Bing Dawe that has been in the collection for many years. It invokes not only birds' wings but also the whole process of archaeology, remains and structures. There is also the extra power that comes from the discovery that this evocative work is made of beautifully shaped wood, unexpectedly articulated with bicycle parts.

Other discoveries follow. There are two portraits by Lindauer of a singularly handsome Maori man and woman from the 19th century. The man wears part of a huia skin as ear decoration. The curious hooked beak of the bird is unique as these islands are unique. The woman, Pare Watene, wears huia feathers as a sign of nobility.

The extinct huia with its extraordinary difference between the male and the female beak is also the subject of a remarkable drawing by Christine Hellyar in the next room. This stringently linear drawing has a long title, A Huia Male Stone Hammer: A Huia Female Bone Pick. The two implements not only suggest different functions, they illustrate the making of tools, archaeology, history and place - and comment on sexual roles all exactly linked to New Zealand.

Birds have big emotional connotations. On one of the pillars there is a quotation from a song by Leonard Cohen, "Like a bird on the wire/ Like a drunk in a midnight choir/ I have tried in my way to be free". This concept of birds as freedom is seen in a small drawing by Colin McCahon, Birds and Mist. In complete contrast is a huge work on 10 sheets of corrugated iron by Ralph Hotere, done to protest at the loss of the bird sanctuary of Aramoana. The work shows the sheltering dark of nature where birds are protected and, on the horizon, a blaze of white light which is not enlightenment but danger. The dark is freedom for birds and people.

A feature of the show is the inclusion of objects that make use of feathers. There are some frivolous 1920s cloche hats borrowed from Te Papa and, further on, 10 magnificent cloaks made by the weaver Digress Te Kanawa that convey a feeling of proud ceremony and are remarkably varied in design.

Of course, in an exhibition about birds, there must be flight and in the same room that has a lovely quotation from the poet Hone Tuwhare there is a big, passionately painted protest painting by Emily Karaka, where a ruru or owl flies weeping over the complexity of land claims. The most startling image of flight is a photograph by Lisa Reihana, where a mythical hero, Maori, but for all the world like Edward Scissorhands, emerges from the dark on some undetermined mission.

But the most illuminating and remarkable feat of curating is reserved for the paintings of Bill Hammond. Hammond is, for the moment, the auction's darling and suffers because when people see his work they think of the price and not the detail. Yet he makes profound images from our fauna and our history with the birds in his paintings. In this show they are displayed next to tables on which bird skins borrowed from museums are laid out. We can see the origins of the astonishing symbolic use he makes of birds in such paintings as Buller's Birds.

The many moods of this exhibition are exemplified in the last room where an impressive but pessimistic work by Greer Twiss throws a spotlight on the leaden carcass of a bird among the work trestles of everyday life and the optimistic prints by Pat Hanly, which show a child pointing to the eye of knowledge in the heart of wisdom while the bird of love and peace flutters overhead.

There is also the bold shape of a frigate bird over a wide horizon by Don Binney.

It is perhaps the best thing he has done and makes a superb poster for this exhibition, which is rounded off by some chirpy sparrows on orange poles. This work by Michael Parekowhai shows exotic colour and exotic birds thoroughly domesticated: arrivals that did not depart.