Ralph Hotere
Port Chalmers
1984
oil-based enamel on stainless steel, Roger Hickin frame
signed Hotere, dated '84 and inscribed Port Chalmers/Ninteen Eighty Four in brushpoint lower edge; signed Ralph Hotere and inscribed Port Chalmers in ink verso
770 x 770mm
PROVENANCE
Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland, c1988.
Ralph Hotere - Visual Kind of Starvation
Essay by SAMANTHA TAYLOR
Hone Papita Ruakura "Ralph" Hotere (Te AupÅuri, Te Rarawa) was born in Mitimiti, a small settlement on the Hokianga Harbour, Northland in 1931. He initially studied art at the Dunedin School of Art in 1952, and later was granted a fellowship that supported him to study at the Central School of Art and Design in London. He travelled through Europe and was influenced by the development of contemporary movements - pop and op art. He returned to Dunedin in 1965 and was the Frances Hodgkins Fellow at the University of Otago in 1969.
Hotere's Black Window series found its impetus in a significant event in New Zealand's cultural history: the Save Aramoana campaign that commenced in 1974 and stood in opposition to the planned construction of an aluminium smelter at the Aramoana settlement on the Otago Peninsula. The campaign was motivated by the fact that the development of the smelter would displace the communities of both Aramoana and the nearby village of Te Ngaru, and it resulted in the settlement's reactionary measure of declaring itself a sovereign state, a 'micro nation' with its own border posts and passports, on 23 December 1980. The campaign would eventually prevail over the movement to build the smelter and, to Hotere, the events that unfolded in Aramoana were significant not because of the fact that a small community eventually triumphed over a much larger oppressor, but rather because the campaign's central concern was the right of an Indigenous community to self-determination. In Hotereâ's work, the references to Aramoana do not simply refer to a conflict over an aluminium smelter. Instead, the Aramoana threat was emblematic of the plight that the tangata whenua continue to face under the system of governance imposed by the Treaty of Waitangi.
Like a functional architectural window, Black Window - Mungo at Aramoana (1982) seeks to present the viewer with a carefully selected vantage on a world outside of their own immediate physical environment. The work presents a bleak outlook, with the harsh metallic picture plane against a black ground. The colour black has a ubiquitous presence in Hotere's practice - the artist's friend and colleague, Hone Tuwhare, refers to its presence as a "visual kind of starvation"¹ - and in Black Window - Mungo at Aramoana the dark matter is held up like a blockade and denies the viewer any scenery or perspective.
While Ralph Hotere's practice is deeply politicised, it was not until the early 1980s, when his Black Window series was produced, that he openly engaged with contemporary political discourse. Prior to this, the concerns echoed in Black Window were present, however they were often hidden behind a complex set of reference points. For example, Hotere's Black Paintings of the late 1960s and early 1970s engaged with the aroha of the tangata whenua by constructing a waiata from abstract visual harmonics; and his Sangro series of the late 1970s engaged with the issue of self-determination by recalling the death of his brother Jack in the Second World War.
Black is absolute. Set at the end of the chromatic scale, it forms the boundary to hues both warm and cold and, depending on the mattness or glossiness of its application, it can negate or synthesise colour. This idea is boldly illustrated in the lustrous lacquer surfaces that constitute Ralph Hotere's Black Paintings. This series of minimal, emblematic paintings engaged with many of the formal devices that would become defining features of the artist's practice. In Hotere's Black Paintings, line, colour and black harmoniously converge to create a works of exquisite detail and beauty.
Hotere's Black Window paintings were a departure from his earlier practice because their message was not infused into lush visual heraldry. Rather than quietly persuading the viewer as to the merits of its cause, Black Window - Mungo at Aramoana gives physical form to the unequal power relationship that is the basis of New Zealand's nationhood. Mungo National Park is a protected reserve in South Western New South Wales, Eastern Australia. Here significant archaeological discoveries of ancient human remains have taken place, termed the 'Mungo Man' and the 'Mungo Lady'; the Mungo Lady is one of the world's oldest cremations. "Hotere visited the site in 1982 with a group of archaeologist friends. The names and colours of the gold, red ochre and grey layers of sand that have formed on the lakeshore find their way into Hotere's images: Mungo, Zanci, Gol Gol."² The reference to this ancient being is perhaps a comment on our temporal existence: the fiery inferno of the aluminium smelter a cremation of atoms and transformation.
Port Chalmers (1984) is a slightly later work that, like many of his works that year, riffs off George Orwell's classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The steel surface of this work is glossy in areas, reflecting the viewer; in other areas an expressive burnishing creates a charged energy - perhaps symbolic of Orwell's dystopia and a reflection of political issues that were infiltrating the artist's thoughts. Nuclear testing at Mururoa Atoll would inspire another series of works that started in 1984.
Through all of Hotere's works we see a deep connection to Aotearoa and the land here, his works offer a window into his poetic understanding of the world around him. This glimpse of understanding also poses a line of questioning in which his highly reflective surfaces will sit before us as a mirror, forcing the viewer to be within and seek beyond the work before them.
1 Hone Tuwhare, Deep River Talk: Collected Poems, (Auckland: Godwit Press, 1993) 51.
2 Kriselle Baker, Ralph Hotere, (Auckland: Ron Sang Publications, 2008,) 169.
