The First Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

Pureora warawara okarito 1992-93 Oil on canvas with paua shell inlaid in wooden beam, hung from carved wooden lintel 190x 118cm (approx.) Collection: The artist NEW ZEALAND SELWYN MURU Selwyn Muru (Murupaenga) was born in Te Hapua, Northland, New Zealand in 1940. After training at Ardmore Teachers College he taught at a number of rural schools in New Zealand until devoting himself full-time to his art practice in 1962. During the 1960s he was also very active in public broadcasting, pioneering Maori input into radio and tele­ vision drama. Since then Muru has written, fronted and directed several documentaries and has been active as a playwright. He was involved in staging the play Waitangi for the 1990 New Zealand International Festival of the Arts. T he artist held his first solo exhibition in 1963 and has participated in group exhi­ bitions such as 'Contemporary New Zealand Art' which toured Japan and South-East Asia, 1964; 'Contemporary Maori Art', Waikato Museum of Art and History, Hamilton, 1976; 'Parihaka', touring New Zealand in 1979; 'Haongia teTaonga', Centre for Contemporary Art, Hamilton, 1986; and 'Kohia Ko Taikaka Anake', NationalArt Gallery, Wellington, 1990- 91. Selwyn Muru received the prestigious Te Waka Toi Award in 1990 in recognition for his excellence in the field of contemporary Maori visual arts, television, journalism and whaikorero (oration), and for his services generally to Maori culture. In 1993 he was appointed senior lecturer at Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland. T hroughout the 1970s and 1980s, the contemporaryMaori art movement emerged as a public force in Aotearoa. T hrough his sculpture and painting SelwynMuruhas been a pioneer of this phenomenon, together with artists connected with the organisation Nga PunaWaihanga suchas ParaMatchitt, Sandy Adsett, Fred Graham and Arnold Wilson. It is Muru's intention to communicate directly to as wide an audience as possible, extending the meaning and relevance of traditional Maori taonga (treasures) and cultural values in contemporary idioms. In 1981, for example, when New Zealand faced the turmoil and overtly exposed racism created by the Springbok Rugby Tour, SelwynMuru charac­ teristically went public when he displayed twenty-five large paintings on screens in Auckland's Aotea Square. His messages wereclearand direct-the tour was equated with apartheid and racial injustice; for the tangata whenua (original inhabitants of Aotearoa) this implied loss of land and exploitation of it in the interests of profit. In 1992, the artist began working on a 92 series of paintings under the general heading 'T hey have torn the cloak from the body of the land'. He also executed a large, eight-panelled work on canvas after Hone Tuwhare's famous poem No Ordinary Sun which railed against the prospect of nuclear warfare and served as a requiem for peace. Both concerns inform the three paintings hung from traditionally inspired pare (lintels) chosen for the 'First Asia-Pacific Triennial'. Here our understanding of landscape has been politicised in no uncertain terms. The thickly encrusted surfaces of the paintings, the wound-like renting of the top layer of canvas, the impassioned text, all serve to express the powerlessness of the Maori in their own land. Without land, theMaori people are without history. For several years now, Selwyn Muru's monumental Waharoa (carved gateway) has been permanently situated in Aotea Square. Using huge pieces of the native timber macrocarpa, Muru carved images of birds, fish, the nuclear disarmament symbol, a cross, and abstract symbols with Polynesian andMaori origins. This waharoa wasmatched by smaller carved assemblages such as Archway for Henry Moore (1986). Selwyn Muru's current works testify to the inter­ relatedness of cultural traditions, but above all they are pertinent and honest reminders of New Zealand's political and social fabric. Anne Kirker Korowai (Cloak) 1992-93 (' He iwi kotahi tatou... we are one people') Oil on canvas, folded, hung from carved wooden lintel 178x120cm (approx.) Collection: The artist