Michael Shepherd
30 June - 13 August 2000
This exhibition will feature seventeen works produced between 1992 and 1999 by
Auckland-based artist Michael Shepherd and is drawn from both private and public
collections. Shepherd's illusory, enigmatic and exquisitely rendered paintings look to the
past for both their technique and subject matter. The early social history of New Zealand
has long held a fascination for him, and he has found fertile ground for inspiration
within the relationships, conflicts and cultural negotiations of Maori and Pakeha. In The
Nervous System, by Allan Smith, Shepherd stated that this "...obscure, fought over
history" allowed him to "...ride the boundaries between art, geography,
sociology and history (creating) a model through which time and narrative might plausibly
be depicted."
Using techniques mastered by artists in the 17th century, and often working from
photographs and historical documents, Shepherd's work is an oblique kind of history
painting, which acknowledges the inevitable failure of any attempt to definitively record
the past. Many of his paintings deliberately emphasise the absence of what they purport to
recall, with subtle details alluding to the gradual translation of historical 'truth' over
time.
The artist became particularly aware of this phenomenon when researching the life of
his great-uncle who fought at the Battle of the Somme in 1916. As described in Lands and
Deeds, (1996) by Gregory O'Brien, Shepherd's great-uncle and "... another man had
entered New Zealand history in two lots of three minutes. They had carried out two brave
deeds within the space of half an hour. And his life was over by 1917. All I was left with
was this shadowy stuff of memory itself and my own pseudo-attempts to bring this to
life". Shepherd contrasts the minute realism of his paintings, and his unswerving
attention to historical detail, with this inability to authentically represent the past,
as seen in Treaty (1996). Featuring official-looking seals and signatures, the document
Shepherd depicts is, in fact, meaningless, as the wording becomes indecipherable against
the darkening surface of the 'aged' document.
Shepherd was born in Hamilton in 1950 and graduated with a Diploma of Fine Arts
(Honours) from Elam, University of Auckland in 1979. In 1982, he was awarded a Queen
Elizabeth Arts Council Travel Grant, which he used to study 17th century Dutch painting
materials and techniques in Amsterdam. Shepherd has exhibited throughout New Zealand since
his first solo show at Denis Cohn Gallery, Auckland, in 1980. His work has been purchased
for private collections within New Zealand and internationally, and is held in most major
national public collections, including those of Te Papa Tongarewa, Auckland Art Gallery
and the Robert McDougall Art Gallery.
Felicity Milburn
This exhibition was held at the Robert McDougall Contemporary
Art Annex in the Arts Centre.
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