B.

1969 was a watershed year for Ralph Hotere. It was the year he was awarded the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship at the University of Otago, which led to his permanent move to Dunedin and Port Chalmers. Black Painting is not only one of the first purely abstract paintings to enter the collection, it is also the first painting by a Māori artist to be acquired. In Hotere’s enigmatic series of Black Paintings from 1968 and 1969, pinstripe circles or lines pierce the void of the dark backgrounds. Black Painting was acquired from the 1969 Group Show in Christchurch by Muir, who had studied under Hotere in Auckland during the mid-1960s.

(1969 Comeback Special 27 August – 6 November 2016)

Ralph Hotere’s Requiem Series of paintings of 1973–74 refers to the Catholic mass for the dead and his use of dark, subdued tones throughout the series imbues a sense of contemplative reflection. In this related drawing, flowing watercolour washes are overlaid with precisely executed pinstripe lines of paint creating a striking contrast between the spontaneous and the orderly.

Hotere (of Aupouri descent) was born in Taikarawa, in Northland. A New Zealand Art Societies Fellowship Scholarship in 1961 enabled him to travel to London to study at the Central School of Art. He also travelled extensively throughout Europe. Hotere returned to New Zealand in 1965 and from 1969 was based in Dunedin. His work dealt with environmental issues, politics, poetry, religion, colonialism and racism. The Arts Foundation of New Zealand listed him as an inaugural Icon Artist in 2003.

In 1962 Ralph Hotere visited his brother’s grave in the Sangro River War Cemetery in Italy. While there, he copied from headstones the ages of the Maori Battalion soldiers who, like his brother Jack, were killed while attempting to cross the Sangro River in late 1943, during World War II. Hotere has formed the numbers into a Greek cross, with a large ‘X’ shape ‘crossing’ out the space beneath them. Together, these images suggest both a private requiem and a public protest at the futility of war.

Across the bottom of the canvas, Hotere has stencilled phrases from an ancient Maori chant that calls for the return of the godwit – a symbol for the spirits of the dead – to familiar shores. The paint runs and falls like rain, blood or tears.

Hotere was born in Taikarawa, Northland, and was widely regarded as one of New Zealand’s greatest artists. He is represented in public and private collections throughout New Zealand. He lived in Port Chalmers, near Dunedin, where he died in 2013.

For the exhibition Painters As Printmakers (19 October 2007 - 20 January 2008) this work appeared with this label:

In 1984 Ralph Hotere was a visiting artist at the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts, where he produced a number of etchings and lithographs in collaboration with several printmakers at the School. Hotere incorporated the use of an angle grinder to mark the surface of the etching plate for this work. At the time, Hotere was also using angle grinders for his stainless steel works in much the same way, creating vibrant, spontaneous and lively marks across the surfaces of both mediums.

Hotere began painting in the 1950s and studied at the Central School of Art, London in 1961. Printmaking in a wide range of mediums has been an important element in his oeuvre since the early 1960s, when he began producing screenprints. Hotere has enjoyed working with lithography in particular, often extending subjects found in his paintings.

Ko Wai Koe? Ralph Hotere asks ‘who are you?’ in large stencilled letters at the bottom of this drawing. The artist has also inscribed the top and side of the drawing with Tenei taku manu te rere atu nei – he karere – no Te whitinga mai o te ra. Pataia mai – i ahu mai koe i hea? (This is my bird that flies to you – a messenger from where the sun rises. It asks from where have you come?) Dense ink and lacquer saturate the work like black raindrops, soaking through the paper and providing an impenetrable surface over which Hotere has worked; his intense graphite mark-making has a subtle reflective quality depending on the light. Hotere has embraced the use of diecuts, such as the small square void amongst graphite marks that allows the surface beneath to emerge. (Die Cuts and Derivations, 11 March – 2 July 2023)