Auckland Art Gallery << Now showing in/ [new line] HEI KONEI MAI:/WE'LL MEET AGAIN / Row of 32 or so blue full stops / MAIN GALLERY, /GROUND FLOOR >> 2 in red circle ref to plan of Gallery<Patere 1977>> description is derived from Curator's Description on gallery's registration details - http://collection.aucklandartgallery.govt.nz/results.jsp?view=detail&pos=1&id=14912 - gallery website says no image available for website - but is reproduced nevertheless in gallery newsletter ---- would it be foolish to expect from newsletter image frameless bleeding its whites into surrounding white page to see image 27 horizontal stripes mainly black & white with circles appended variously in printer's inks applied 85 x 66 mm on white gallery wall image which then would take large expanse of white as ground to which blacks have been subsequently applied as figures on ground interesting as they say image for hei kone mai colon new line we'll meet again ? who's we ? read intrusions of white outgrowths fern frond canoe prow living attached to body of progenitor group or frond finished completed circles see how numerous how lined up apparently all interlocking within black field yet note one greyish about 1 black to 7 white mixture cirrcle isolated between two whites yet reading so and more so and more blacks pushed to edge inequalities inequities as if Gordon painting in NZ Aotearoa white liberal scholar wife translator into literary English of Maaori poetry wdn't notice such obvious allegorical possibility pains to get every edge distinct avoiding complications artist persona decorative taste distraction politics so evident Gordon did not elucidate next door Maaori neighbour asked me to confirm that I was a pacifier maybe yes as Eldridge Cleaver Malcom X used to ask of liberal intellectuals not appeasement of black but voicing concern as white with government policy as here now deploring lack of care in Auckland City Council Art Gallery with about 100 staff employed for cataloguing and registering for what is announced same page as [large blue lettered heading]<Patere1977/[smaller black type] Acquisitions text includes text<<...The title Patere has many/meanings in Maori, but in this case can be interpreted as a chant because of the painting's fluid, melodic quality...[other works named] of the same year have a similar sense of harmony and balance>>language vague abstract <> only justifiable as acutely paradoxical liquid viscose or not 'dried' on this painting in 1977 <> unspeciified way of reading painting as musical score <>can be attributed to any work whatever with a little ingenuity this text effectively helps people to slop while distracting them from issues of serious import on Waitangi Day & every day honour the treaty & honour those who seek to honour it by meditating on it as painter Gordon did for about 40 years effort recuperated in NZ official culture by formalist autonomy critical language & address to anyone who could read discouraged also for Maaori by attack on Walters as racist appropriator for arty formalism thus failing to attempt to read his paintings as messages to government with paintings structured as coded for relations between competing pairs looking more like backgammon than chess noticeably gridded in to zones by simple implied divisions and/or golden mean but always the competing light dark inerlocked within one territory each painting asks for an answer to the question is this how it looks in NZ Aotearoa with identity groups signatories to a treaty but also image can be laid over relationship in a marriage or good and evil nature and culture body and soul mind and senses or any such duality cheers T
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