Artists of New Zealand and Australia Working in Contemporary Modes
Artists' Statements
New Zealand Artists
John Edgar began working in stone in 1977. He lives in Karekare on the West Coast of Auckland. He says: "Important themes in my work continue to be concerned with the part that objects play in creating culture, the way that they represent and reflect our understanding and development, how they become icons of our societies. It is my conscious endeavor to transform materials so that they appear to be more than the sum of their parts. My work is of a highly didactic nature, where analogies are drawn between the materials, the processes, and the human condition." Many of his works are constructions, incorporating stone, glass, and metal. The primary materials are white marble, black granite, and basalt.
Bill Hammond is known for his fabrication of strange supernal worlds imperiled by madness, decay,and death. After graduating from college in 1969, he spent years working in a number of jobs, among them the making and selling of wooden toys. His paintings of the 1980s are characterized by their harsh colors and claustrophobic appearance and are painted on various materials including metal, wood, and canvas. The titles of his works from this period often derive from rock songs. Since the mid 1990s, Hammond's work has referred to the New Zealand landscape and its endangered wildlife, influenced by Buller's Book of New Zealand Birds. However, these works are imbued with a sense of the surreal that some commentators have connected with that of Max Ernst.
Michael Parekowhai has been exhibiting since 1993. His work makes references to the abstraction of New Zealanders Colin McCahon and Gordon Walters, to the formalism of David Smith, and to the conceptualism of Marcel Duchamp, as well as to contemporary movements such as Neo-Geo. His work also draws on his Maori heritage (Nga Araki/ Ngati Whakarongo), exploring the complexities of cultural interaction and translation. However, he addresses issues of Maori identity, history, and culture without using traditional Maori imagery, materials, or techniques. While participating in the languages, strategies, and plays of international contemporary art, his work also gives voice to concerns that are pointedly local. "They Comfort Me" (shown here) alludes to the childhood game of pick-up-sticks, but the scale and sharpened spears appear more dangerous than reassuring.
Séraphine Pick employs fragments of half-remembered dreams and suppressed desires that break through the many layers of paint. Her paintings depict detailed worlds with erotic surrealistic figures and vivid Bosch-like mindscapes. Her work is visionary and historical.
Australian Artists
Howard Arkley was inspired by suburban landscapes for two decades. The "ideal home" images became iconic within Australia and attracted attention from abroad as well. His work has been exhibited internationally, including shows in Korea, Singapore, and Germany. In an interview with Leo Edelstein he talks about ". . . the international global village, everyone's the same, but when it actually starts to appear that you could be here and you could be in California and this street could be anywhere in the world, then people have a problem--they want uniqueness, they want this special quality, but the thing is if they looked harder they would find that it is unique. It's unique in the same way that a tree's a tree and dirt's dirt, but for the particular artist who can perceive something special, then it becomes something else." He died less than six weeks after the opening of the Venice Biennale in which "Fabricated Room" (shown here) was installed.
Tracey Moffatt, one of Australia's most prolific artists, denies the stereotype of contemporary Aboriginality, cutting across social and racial issues with humor and sensitivity. Her reuse of conventions of the popular media through film and photographs evokes her suburban upbringing, which was as much influenced by popular media as by sociopolitical concerns. Her long list of exhibitions and publications place her as an important international contemporary artist.
Angelina Nasso lives and works in New York City. Of her work she says, "I am interested in investigating what . . . lies behind corporeal forms, in reaching beyond the appearance of things, looking for a synthesis of the outer and inner world." Color and the use of fluid transparent paint build a surface through which each preceding mark is a record that informs the next. Clarity and ambiguity exist in tandem and evoke both mindscape and seascape.
Biographies and Acknowledgments
