The Fourth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

RALPH HOTERE - MINDFUL 1 KAUPAPA' 54 HOTERE When you offer only three vertical lines precisely drawn and set into a dark pool of lacquer it is a visual kind of starvation: And even though my eye-balls roll up and over to peer inside myself, when I reach the beginning of your eternity I say instead: hell let's have another feed of mussels Like, I have to think about it, man When you stack horizontal lines into vertical columns which appear to advance, recede, shimmer and wave like exploding packs of cards I merely grunt and say: well, if it is not a famine, it's a feast I have to roll another smoke, man But when you score a superb orange circle on a purple thought-base I shake my head and say: hell, what is this thing, called love Like, I'm euchered man. I'm eclipsed (Hone Tuwhare, 1970)' APT2002 The artist in his Port Chalmers studio 1979 Photograph: Marti Friedlander When this poem by Hone Tuwhare was first published, his friend Ralph Hotere had been producing black-surfaced minimalist paintings for some three years and had reached a decisive moment in his artistic career. Exhibiting since the early fifties, Hotere largely earned his living as a school art adviser until his obvious talent earned him fel lowships to study in Europe during the next decade. At the time, his imagery shifted between representation and abstraction and always demonstrated a fluent visual competency. He could have conceivably continued to build a career abroad; however, rather than prolonging the years spent in Europe, Hotere returned to Aotearoa New Zealand in 1965. Memories of his brother's death in World War Two (the basis of his 'Sangro' series, commenced in 1962) and his geometric shaped oils of 1964 from the 'Human rights' series, backgrounded his response to the Vietnam War, which he recorded in drawings during the sea voyage home. While his political conscience sharpened so did his creative focus, and he found an exemplar in Ad Reinhardt, whose so-called 'black paintings' prompted Hotere's own series w ith this title. The first were produced and exhibited at Auckland's Barry Lett Galleries during 1968 and are seen by many as the most obvious indication of Hotere's future directions. Vertical panels painted with black gloss enamel, which reflects the viewer back onto himself, are precisely inscribed edge-to-edge with a thin cruciform design in a single primary colour, or in shades of blue. This superimposition of bright, radiant lines onto a black surface, the religious inference (and that of race), the presentation of the panels as variations on a theme (their seriality), and not least the elegant finesse of the works came to characterise much of Hotere's subsequent output. His oeuvre, in fact, reads like the visual branding of a culture's tribal affiliations, conscience and spiritual beliefs upon itself. These qualities have been both mysteriously and eloquently repeated over some 30 years in the artist's work. Ralph Hotere Aotearoa New Zealand b.1931 Black painting 3: Yellow on black 1968 Brolite lacquer on hardboard 123 x 62.3cm Collection: Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth Photograph: Bryan James