1993 APT1 Conference : Identity, tradition and change

A work by Fiona Foley in Aratjara comments pointedly on the omission of Aboriginal artists from that exhibition, and on the artist’s own token inclusion in the following Perspecta.8 Although art by Pacific Island Polynesians, a significant group in New Zealand’s cultural mix, has yet to be adequately acknowledged, these days the ^exclusion of Maori art from survey or representative exhibitions of New Zealand art would be unthinkable. Until comparatively recently, however, it would seldom have occurred to curators that Maori art was worthy of inclusion, as a distinct component, or that it formed an integral part of our national and cultural identity. [Another question from Francis Pound: “How to deal with the exclusion of Maori art from most New Zealand art history?”] Sadly, a whole generation of modernist Maori painters and sculptors, who had been active since around 1950, were largely dismissed by the establishment as producers of “hybrids” or “airport art” or “museum fodder”. These artists include some of the most highly respected names in the Maori art community. Internal factors - the resurgence of Maori nationalism and culture since the Land'March on Parliament in 1975, and its artistic expression; and external factors - the collapse of modernism, the discrediting of the notion of “primitivism”, the advent of pluralism, and the explosion of international interest in “art on the margins”, have finally forced Pakeha art writers to take account of a substantial body of work by a significant body of artists located within a context about which they actually know very little, for all that they co-exist with Maori in the same country. In 1965 the Times and the Daily Telegraph art critics observed of a London exhibition of contemporary New Zealand art that it was derivative and imitative, and lacked any distinctive, national character. ^John McDonald, Work on sacred ground, The [Australian] Weekend Review, 28-29 August 1 9 9 3 ,7 .