Sarah Hillary: 'I certainly wouldn't want to climb Everest'

Sarah Hillary, the private daughter of a very public man, is exhibiting her work at the Anna Miles Gallery in Central Auckland. Photo / Martin Sykes

Sarah Hillary was a bit nervous about being boring. Did people who were boring, she wanted to know, get given the flick? Part of her might have been relieved if she had been.

She has an understandable conflict over wanting to talk about her art - the ostensible reason for going to see her - and an innate reserve. This is partly her nature and partly, obviously, because of her name.

I knew she had always insisted that interviews are about her work: as the principal conservator at Auckland Art Gallery, or her art.

She is 53 and has always painted but she didn't exhibit until she was 40. "I suppose I was a bit nervous about it... I mean it's always a bit nerve-racking, exposing what you do. People might think it's really stupid and dumb. And they may still do that anyway."

Of course once you start to exhibit your work, people will want to talk to you about your work, and about you. "It's been a slight conflict, because I do prefer to keep private."

She has never wanted to be interviewed about her family. This is more than fair enough and yet ... It's tricky, isn't it? So I was a bit nervous because I did want to talk about her family. Because I want to find out about her and you can't do that without asking the obvious: What it was like to be the daughter of the most famous man in the country?

I asked about the conflict and she said, "Oh well, I guess over the years I've come to terms with the whole thing, to realise that I can't be completely private ... I realise that, especially now that Ed's dead, it's inevitable, really. There seem to be more and more things that [her brother] Peter and I have to deal with from his death. And it's silly not to take advantage of those things because a lot of them are about helping other people and encouraging people to do things."

Anyway, possibly because we were both a bit nervy, we got along just fine, I think. Although it is true she is not the most garrulous of interviewees, having inherited the Hillary reserve which exhibits itself in a friendly accessibility which masks a desire to keep the private just that. They are a clever lot, the Hillarys, but not in any show-offy way.

Her father was a master of the "I'm just a humble beekeeper" disguise, wasn't he? I don't mean this to suggest that this was in any way manipulative, but he was obviously cleverer than that public image might imply.

"He was clever." So that was a good act? "Yeah. Ha, ha. He was also an interesting writer and I've been reading quite a few of my parents' letters. They're quite interesting, actually. And he could do a very funny public lecture."

There are, then, limits to how much she wants to try to analyse her father, publicly. But she demonstrates those limits with an easy grace, which she might have inherited. She also has a recognisable directness.

I'd asked about her previous interview rule, and wondered whether she'd been wary of people thinking she might be exploiting the Hillary name. She said, "Well, you know, I realise that I am, of course. And you wouldn't be interviewing me about my art if it wasn't for that."

We'd just come from the Anna Miles Gallery where her new show, Lucky, is hanging. She likes to paint tiny little homages - to mountains and earlier New Zealand artists - on tiny little surfaces, including pipi shells and buttons.

These latest works are of Nepalese lucky bowls - many collected by her parents in the 1960s - and of ferns, collected and pressed in an album in 1875 by her great-great- grandmother Ida Hillary (nee Fleming), and of detail from the works of other New Zealand artists.

She inherited the scrapbook from her father's estate, so the exhibition is a sort of scrapbook itself: of the interests of her family, and her interest in New Zealand artists.

What might the works say about her? "Probably that I'm trying to search for tidiness in my life and failing to achieve it!"

She is tiny and tidy, like her art, and she likes arcane jokes you have to look for. In one of her Lucky paintings is a maidenhair fern from Ida's scrapbook and a figure of a maiden from a Frances Hodgkins work.

She is wearing her sensible art conservator's outfit of practical, dark pants, sensible flat shoes and funny, unexpected socks with brightly coloured flowers. What cheerful socks. "Well, it's spring," she said.

I read her a quote, about her paternal grandfather, from an interview I had with Peter some years ago. He was "very interested in the book of Job and all those terrible trials of life. And I think searching through these sorts of things has been very much part of the Hillary experience".

She looked faintly horrified.

I said, re-reading that, I thought: "Goodness. What a legacy!"

"I think," she said, laughing, "that humour is the more important part of our family." But they are a complicated lot. Is she? "Oh probably." She was lucky. She liked her father. "I loved my father. I mean, he was also a complex person. He was an interesting person because he had a fresh approach to things and he had a certain appeal to people. And he was certainly a great fun father ... But I suppose he expected quite a lot. I remember, not long ago, I told him proudly that I'd just run half a marathon. He asked me what my time was and he said, 'you realise that's the time for a full marathon'."

She says - that was a funny story - her father was proud of her, and said so often. "Well, later on. I don't think he could believe I managed to get a job and stuck at it. When I first started working at the gallery, if he discovered I'd taken a day off work, he was extremely worried. He thought I was slacking off or something."

But why did he? "Oh, well, I did go through a bit of a wild time." I'm having difficulty imagining this. "Well, I went to Dunedin [to uni] in the 70s." How wild was she? "Well, you know, I wasn't as staid and responsible as I am now!"

She's not about to tell how wild, but she says she was reacting in the usual teenage way against a father who "was quite strict with us girls. So I thought I'd go out and have a good time. But also, when my mother and sister died ... There was quite a depressing time ... So I think it wasn't wild fun, more like not really caring that much."

It must be peculiar that people who don't know you do know about the central tragedy of your life: the deaths, in a plane crash in Nepal in 1975, of her mother and sister. "Yeah, but the thing is, people are always very nice about that and a lot of people knew my mother. So I would find it quite comforting when people say they knew my mother."

People are interested in her background. She is interested in background, in the artistic sense. I said I'd wondered what a psychologist might make of her tiny mountain paintings. That she was attempting to diminish the importance of mountains in her life? She thought that was a bit funny (and probably a bit silly, which of course it was).

She said, "Oh, I love mountains. I think they're lovely." She goes up them. "Oh, yes. I go skiing and I go tramping. I love looking at mountains. I think they're fantastic."

She has never had the remotest desire, unlike her father and brother, to go up Everest. "Well, I'm a bit scared of heights. I certainly wouldn't want to climb Everest. No way! They don't have cappuccinos there!"

It is not very Hillary to have a phobia about heights. "You'll probably make that [the headline.] Daughter of ... [has fear of heights.]"

There have been worse headlines. The spat with the Auckland Museum, now resolved, but very public at the time, over the use of Sir Ed's papers. She is not about to say anything about the museum's director (Hillarys are not silly) but she will say she's worried about the direction of the museum.

"You know, I personally think that specialisation and research is really important for a museum. That's vital. And this is the area they seem to be moving away from."

The publication of the details of her father's will in a newspaper was another. That, she says, "was a bit of a low point because it was so humiliating. I found it really upsetting. And I know that things like that happen to people who are well-known all the time and that's why they develop such tough hides."

Has she? "Obviously not!"

Oh, I don't know. She has a certain Hillary resilience, or humour. Because she then decided, about people knowing about the will: "It was actually quite good. People won't be asking for money!"

Yes, you can see that that might amount, in a peculiar way, to a sort of freedom from expectation. As might a certain coming to terms with her father's life, now that he's died.

"I suppose, really, I'm just being honest about myself because, actually, all my life I've had to be careful about what I've said about my family. You can't just throw it into a conversation, like everyone else does, because people think it's showing off. I guess I'm just trying to be more relaxed about it all."

She was kind enough to talk to me, and I wouldn't say she'd rather climb Everest, but I don't imagine she loved every minute.

So the least I can do in return is to say that you should go and look at her paintings. They do tell you something about her: they're lovely, thoughtful, and interesting.

Lucky is at the Anna Miles Gallery, until October 3.