Hotere - Out The Black Window
5 February - 19 April 1998
Taking its title from a poem by Cilla McQueen, Hotere - Out The Black Window
is a touring exhibition organised by City
Gallery, Wellington, which surveys Hotere's work, examines his
significant contribution to contemporary New Zealand art and outlines
the central threads in his development as a painter.
Since returning to New Zealand in the mid-1960s, after several years in England and
Europe, Ralph Hotere has consistently painted challenging and complex art works, many of
them incorporating poems by such highly regarded writers as Bill Manhire, Hone Tuwhare,
Cilla McQueen and Ian Wedde. Hotere's works however are not just illustrations of the
poems. Instead the poetry has become an integral part of his style and method, has
influenced the formal development of his work and has expanded both its emotional breadth
and sphere of influence.
This aspect of Hotere's painting will be illustrated in this show by wall-mounted
texts. Tuwhare's poem 'We who live in darkness' is seen alongside a Requiem painting and
Cilla McQueen's 'out the black window' is juxtaposed with a Black Window work, adding rich
layers to this artist's verbal/ visual conversation with the viewer. Drawn from a vast
body of work, Out the Black Window demonstrates how Hotere has worked with a great range
of materials - with paper, stainless steel, corrugated iron and unstretched canvas on
which he has variously written using a pencil, paintbrush, stencil and even a blow torch.
At times sections of the works are reminiscent of graffiti, and at other times of
calligraphy, but within them all is a lively and purposeful diversity. Stencilled letters
of the alphabet emerge from the darkness, as do suggestions of land, sea and sky. In the
black windows we see language elements merging with the world of nature, representing
light, shadow, growth and decay.
Curated by the Wellington based poet, writer and artist Gregory O'Brien, the touring
show includes some of Hotere's important works of protest. The Dawn/Water Poem paintings
of the mid 1980s are a reaction against French nuclear testing at Mururoa. Corrugated iron
works such as Aramoana Pathway to the Sea were produced in the late 1970s and early
1980s in opposition to the proposed aluminium smelter at Aramoana, near the mouth of Otago
harbour. Here found or salvaged materials provide the ground upon which the assertive
marks of Hotere's statement are laid. Often Hotere's works transform weather-worn base
materials into stunning objects of reflection and meditation.
This exhibition toured with the assistance of Creative New Zealand, will broaden the public
perception of the wide scope of Hotere's work and provide a strategic
point of access into the work of one of New Zealand's most significant
and dynamic senior artists.
Principal Sponsors Ernst and Young. Local Sponsors Montana.
This exhibition was held at the Robert McDougall Art Gallery
in the Botanic Gardens.
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