Titirangi pays homage to famous son

Sean Duxfield (left) and Tony Brown prepare to hang McCahon's painting John in Canterbury. Behind it hangs Elias Triptych. Picture / Paul Estcourt

New Zealand artist Colin McCahon's Waitakere years are being honoured through a special art exhibition, the opening of his restored former home and the launch of an arts residency.

The exhibition, Colin McCahon: The Titirangi Years - 1953-1959, was opened last night by Prime Minister Helen Clark at Lopdell House Gallery in Titirangi.

More than 40 works including the 16-panel installation The Wake (1958), based on poems by McCahon's contemporary John Caselberg, are on display.

An artist's residence for Elam School of Fine Arts graduates has also been built on the land adjacent to the McCahons' Titirangi house, which has been restored and is open to public visits.

Hamish Keith, a friend and colleague of McCahon during his time in Titirangi and at the Auckland City Art Gallery, said although his works are now worth several hundreds of thousands of dollars, McCahon endured real hardship.

"They were harder times generally in New Zealand then and the wonderful irony of it all is that you now have an artist-in-residence who lives next door to his house in what really is a palace. He had four children and they slept underneath this tiny, tiny house."

Mr Keith said McCahon should be remembered not only for his brilliance with the brush but also for his contribution to New Zealand, fostering its own art history in a time when many local artists were ignored or scorned.

"He helped us to discover there was a history of art in New Zealand and we stopped seeing ourselves as an English rural outpost which was run by a farming government whose customers were 16,000 miles away."

The exhibition curator, Auckland University's Head of English, Associate Professor Peter Simpson, said the years in Titirangi were prolific and were regarded as the watershed of McCahon's career. A visit to the United States in 1958 changed the course of his artistic direction.

It was there he encountered abstract impressionism, said Mr Keith, who can remember seeing McCahon painting sections of The Wake. "He found there was a way to paint and to be an artist outside European cubism and modernism and came back to become the brilliant painter he was."

The exhibition runs until October 8.