Nau mai, haere mai, welcome to eyeCONTACT, a forum built to encourage art reviews and critical discussion about the visual culture of Aotearoa New Zealand. I'm John Hurrell its editor, a New Zealand writer, artist and curator. While Creative New Zealand and other supporters are generously paying me and other contributors to review exhibitions over the following year, all expressed opinions are entirely our own.

Monday, April 13, 2009

From Maps, here is a post-colonial critique of

the Waikato paintings of Ted Bracey.

5 comments:

maps said...

Thanks for the plug. I don't see myself as critiquing so much as dialoguing with Bracey. I visited the Waikato gallery the other day, and noticed that two other Braceys are now on display, as part of a retrospective of work by Waikato Society of Arts members - both are very impressive.

John Hurrell said...

Perhaps I was too quick to start a ruckus.I thought you were implying that the colonial history of the land impacts on aesthetic delectation, and the artist becomes complicit. Maybe some of the theories of Jay Appleton as well?

maps said...

I haven't read Jay Appleton, but Goeff Park has written beautifully about the way that artists and Pakeha politicians have conspired to create the myth of a clean green 'Godzone', at the expense of the history and the indigenous people of the place. I discussed this tendency in relation to the contemporary tourism industry and the Lord of the Rings films in a lecture I gave last year:
http://readingthemaps.blogspot.com/2008/05/ripping-off-brands-rough-guide-to-anti.html

But the point of my rambling post about Bracey was that his response to his surroundings had real emotional authenticity, even if it was based on a certain ignorance of history, and that this authenticity perhaps gives his Waikato canvases a depth which embales them to take on board the sort of critique I offered. And, as I mention at the end of my post, I myself am hardly immune to the sort of romanticism Bracey brought to his Waikato paintings.

John Hurrell said...

I don't think it is likely he was ignorant of the local history, it is just that the landscape reminded him (as he once explained)of his childhood in England. He adored it.He was a visual person - with a finely tuned aesthetic sensibility.

maps said...

The debate rumbles on:
http://readingthemaps.blogspot.com/2009/04/virtues-of-ambiguity-or-why-im-still.html