Landscape painter and patron of the arts, Gwen Malden has made significant contributions to Hawke’s Bay’s art and artists in the half century since her death. Now, in conjunction with Hastings City Art Gallery, her trust has committed to commissioning bodies of work from four local artists biannually.
For a time, HCAG’s main gallery was named after Malden, so it is fitting, after a month’s closure for installation and transformation, that the space be reopened – reimagined by these first commissions.
The opening, last Friday, tested the gallery’s capacity. Heralded by karanga, the eager crowd were herded into the space to bear witness to Te Kīra Whakamoe’s (Tūhoe, Ngāti Ruapani) full throated activation. Painted with hand harvested pigments, in ceremonial clothing of her own making and painting, adorned with taonga of shell and bone, brandishing bird wing rākau, her voice rang to the vaulted ceiling in a cleansing ritual that struck deep to the hearts of all those who took part.
She was flanked by flag-bearing members of the local rainbow community – two of the exhibiting artists identify as takatāpui – and, after kōrero and kai, there was a performance by teenage drag queen Eru Heke.
Te Kīra’s multidisciplinary mahi takes ownership of the space as she reclaims her culture, her body and her identity. In the darkened, womb like space, the work speaks to birth and death – essential and universal – reflected in its title. Kawe Mate is a communal ritual of mourning, for someone so important a tangihanga is not enough.
With foraged and fossicked materials, Whakamoe mourns for a culture suppressed, the forced assimilation that left Māori disconnected both from culture and whenua. The central piece – a checkerboard of raw and burned Wattie’s pallets – refers to the ‘scorched earth’ policy that drove her koro from his land, and the suburban drift that saw disenfranchised Māori pepper potted into Pākeha communities to work in low income, hard labour jobs.
A video installation takes the tyre marks on the road to Kawekawe pā – the aftermath of a burnout – and doubles them back on themselves. In this way, Whakamoe transforms the frustrations of youth, who feel their hope has been stolen along with their land and their culture, into kōwhaiwhai. Open cages draped with skins speak to the damage done by invasive species, the futility of trying to close Pandora’s box.
But there is hope too, if we cast our eyes up, in the hanging formations made of rākau rongōa – traditional medicinal plants, some grown by Whakamoe’s own father. Kites made of angiangi and harakeke represent the transformative power of connection to ancestral wisdoms and practices, echoing the healing she herself gains, and dispenses, from her art.
Bernie Winkels’ Race, too, deals with the impact of colonisation from a different angle. Presented in monochrome, it centres on a long table over laden with almost impossible crockery – a testimony to gluttony Winkels calls ‘the post-apocalyptic dinner party’. Commenting on humanity’s tendency to consume without care for the cost, we are faced with the consequences of our actions.
Pillars and odd shaped cut outs surround the bacchanalian scene, painted in minute detail, referencing urbanisation, infrastructure and land use. Some are deceptively flat, their backs painted to look like television static, exposing the emptiness within, the folly of their design. They throw odd shadows about the space, adding to the clutter, the feeling of oppression.
Despite the gloomy subject matter, it is tackled with Winkels’ signature whimsy. The execution is too absurd to be truly frightening. The artist knows the importance of being accessible. In his materials, he practises as he preaches. There is almost no waste – off cuts are used for pillar toppings and the pillars themselves are repurposed tubes from old carpet bolts. Amidst the sea of black, white and grey is a single, tiny sprout of green – a small sprig of growth and hope that we may change our ways.
By contrast, Nephi Tupaea’s A Taste of Whenua is a riot of colour. Paintings and sepia photographs of her tīpuna are framed by vibrant floral installations by Tamaryn Mikayla, referencing Tupaea’s Pasifka whakapapa, as well as her background in fashion. Each painting is rendered in saccharine tones, as though sugar coating her message to draw viewers in, so that they might perceive the deeper meanings at each piece’s depths.
Her paintings marry the traditional skills she learned at Toimairangi with the influence of old masters. As a youth studying art at school, she was only exposed to European artists, who were held up as examples – qualitatively different from indigenous practises.
In these paintings she overlays kōwhaiwhai with scenes from famous French painters – reimagined to reflect her experience, from whanau working on the whenua to gathering kaimoana, elevating them, pushing back on her previously received colonial teachings.
Forbidden Flesh subverts a Gauguin painting, changing the gaze by taking ownership of the narrative. Challenging taboos, she makes diverse bodies and sexualities visible, in a way that is as empowering as Gauguin was objectifying. Tupaea’s work is an act of defiant reclamation – a bold statement of identity, culture and sovereignty that educates as it delights.
Leslie Falls’ By Hand is again completely different. Working primarily with textiles, she painstakingly reproduces printed items with needle and thread. She copied some items from the Glen Malden archive, including a permission slip from the port authority to allow Malden to paint on their piers. Some of her own correspondence, too, is picked out in thread – the handwriting rendered in incredible detail. She embroiders on vintage textiles such as blankets and handkerchiefs – ones associated with intimate connection, and women’s work.
The Daily is a series of tiles documenting mundane, quotidian tasks drawn meticulously with graphite. Like the hand sewn works, at first they look photographed or photocopied. In a world where we have become accustomed to digital and technological immediacy, Falls extols the virtue of slow, repetitive work, paying homage to the multitude of often unsung women in whose footsteps she walks.
Directly on to a gallery wall, Falls has written a memory map – small stories and fragments of the past recalled without use of the first personal pronoun, one thought connecting to the next as a blanket may be stitched from disparate squares. Taken together, her work is a meditation on the nature of creativity and the process of archiving – what we remember and what we forget.
Though all four inaugural trust recipients are vastly different, both in story and in style, their work somehow compliments each other. Each one filters their observations of the world through their unique lens, making connections, asking questions and stimulating us to think.