Exhibition marks breakthrough in Europe

By Louisa Cleave

New Zealand artists appear to have made a breakthrough in Europe, with the first major exhibition of the country's contemporary art attracting positive reviews in Germany.

More than 100 works under the banner of Toi Toi Toi have been on display in the Museum Fridericianum in Kassel since January and return home next month.

The half-million-dollar exhibition, centred around 27 paintings by Colin McCahon and including the works of 13 other artists, attracted 2000 visitors in its first two weeks.

German reviews of the exhibition seize upon Jane Campion's movie The Piano and make it clear that New Zealand is regarded in the European art world as a no man's land.

At least two reviewers say The Piano helped to illustrate to Germans the distance between the countries.

Under the headline, "Like Piano Playing in the Jungle," Vanessa Muller writes: "It is not only geographically the farthest removed from the art world of Europe: a whole generation of New Zealand post war art seems to be determined by tyranny of distance.

"Modern art from New Zealand is as paradoxical as piano playing in the jungle, when travel and migration are more or less the same.

"Good Old Europe for a long time demanded a clear-cut either/or assimilation in the `International Style' or an aesthetic life in the shadows at the other end of the world."

McCahon's work is mentioned by all reviewers, with one, Dirk Schwarze, saying the artist's multiple-panel works "demand a re-evaluation of developments in painting."

Themes of landscape, nature and light are picked up by one writer, who reached the conclusion that "for most of the artists living there, New Zealand's nature is an outstanding factor, with which they must concern themselves and which influences their work in manifold forms."

Toi Toi Toi was financed by a $50,000 grant from Creative New Zealand and $220,000 from the Auckland Art Gallery and art patrons. The remainder of the exhibition cost was paid by the Museum Fridericianum.