1993 APT1 Conference : Identity, tradition and change

traditional Maori art? How may the tradition be spoken in contemporary terms? How to define it in relation to European modernist and post-modernist art? Need there be any such relation? Might Maori art be a matter of the maker’s blood, regardless of the work’s speech? And has a non Maori any right to speak of these things? 45 Such issues are probed, often perceptively and respectfully, by other Pakeha art writers,- that is to say, New Zealanders of European, usually British, descent ^w rttm ^udrw IS tepheir^epkev^hpegQ j^fiurke^njd ' A surly Maori retort might be: “Well, who asked them?” More constructively, however, I would add two further questions. First: “Why are Pakeha art-writers concerning themselves with such matters?” And, second: “Is there a Maori point of view?” In answer to the first: this is not simply a matter of intellectual curiosity. Pakeha art-writers are having to address such issues because they are now confronted by them; the questions are inevitable and inescapable. Since 1984, when the blockbuster exhibition Te Maori toured the United States of America, Maori art, both traditional and contemporary, has tended, internationally, to enjoy a higher profile and attract greater interest than New Zealand art produced by non-Maori artists. In June 1992, for > example, the Christchurch Press reported that “Contemporary Maori art has been singled out by Australians as one of the most exciting features of a large art exhibition now on show in Sydney” 15/The exhibition Headlands hAUiL ^ 7 was, we were informed, “attracting record crowds to the new Museum A of Contemporary Art. Of the 38 artists represented, 8 were Maori.The intention had been, as the Museum’s Chief Curator, Bernice Murphy, explains, “to incorporate the dialectic of many points of view, of the multiple voices and experiences through which New Zealand art can be written and read.” Thus, “Maori artists and historians were involved 4 Francis Pound, Jacqueline Fraser and ‘Maoriness’, Distance Looks Our Way: 10 Artists from New Zealand (Wellington, 1992), 47. 5 Press, 3 June 1992, 20.