Quotations
21 January 1999 - 12 March 2000
There has been an enduring history of association between text and image. Without a
doubt, the bible remains the most heavily referenced text in visual art to date. Christian
iconography formed the basis of the rejuvenation of the arts in the quattrocento with
Italian artists like Giotto and Duccio receiving significant commissions for adornment in
sacred spaces. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which was a loosely formed British artists
guild in the nineteenth century, mined literature of the day as subjects for their
paintings. Dante Gabriel Rossetti's famous Ophelia refers to the tragic heroine of
Shakespeare's King Lear and Lady of Shallot depicts the heroine from Lord Alfred
Tennyson's poem of the same name. More recent examples closer to home of collaboration and
collusion between writers and artists include Colin McCahon and the poet John Caselberg,
and painter Ralph Hotere and Bill Manhire and Cilla McQueen.
This exhibition highlights the rich and diverse connections and influences between the
written word and visual imagery. Life of Emily Bronte is part of a body of work which
reveals Kathryn Madill's interest in the lives of the woman behind such famous works as
"Wuthering Heights". Madill's delicate and intricate rendering of detail
suggests a literal and metaphoric "interior' and by focusing on the author and the
subjective context of the work, as opposed to the modernist critique of the autonomous
text, contributes to a wider feminist discourse.
Bill Manhire's concrete poem on French nuclear testing at Mururoa atoll formed the
basis of Ralph Hotere's Dawn Water Poem (1986). Hotere adapted the formal arrangement of
this poem and added the word "Mururoa' to politicise what was originally a
"neutral' reflection on the natural world. This work reiterates the repetitive
structure of Hotere's earlier Malady paintings but replaces the neat type-written
lettering with roughly brushed script. With the intensive, explosive orange colour field
and burning cross, Dawn Water Poem can be seen as both a celebration of life and an
apocalpytic protest statement.
From the political to the mythical, Tony Fomison depicts a central character from
Hermann Melville's 'Moby Dick' in his painting, Captain Ahab, the Peg-Legged Hunter of the
Great White Whale (1981). By portraying Ahab gazing out to sea over the ship's rails with
his back to the viewer, Fomison highlights the psychological tension of the Captain's
bitter and lonely resolve to catch the whale who took his leg. Turning his back on the
world of people, Ahab's sole focus is directed away from us. By excluding Moby Dick, the
object of the captain's obsession, from the composition, Fomison reminds us that the
struggle between the man and whale takes place, in reality, inside Ahab's own soul.
Belinda Jones
This exhibition was held at the Robert McDougall Contemporary Art Annex in the Arts Centre.
|
