Style: August 05, 2022
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
66 <strong>Style</strong> | Art<br />
Ode to the south<br />
Renowned writer, poet, artist and curator Gregory O’Brien on his latest<br />
projects and his love of regional New Zealand.<br />
Words Rebecca Fox<br />
Provincial New Zealand has played a much greater part<br />
in the arts than it might give itself credit for, writer and<br />
artist Gregory O’Brien says.<br />
The idea that New Zealand’s art history narrative is<br />
a provincial one rather than a metropolitan one<br />
fascinates him.<br />
“It hasn’t been a Picasso in Paris or Max Beckmann in<br />
Berlin. It’s been like Toss Woollaston at Māpua, it’s been<br />
Colin McCahon in North Otago, or Ralph Hotere at<br />
Port Chalmers… Don Binney at Te Henga, Rita Angus<br />
in Hawke’s Bay ... Joanna Paul in Whanganui, Laurence<br />
Aberhart living in Russell.”<br />
Added to that, top-notch regional cultural institutions<br />
such as the south’s Hocken Library, in Dunedin, and Gore’s<br />
Eastern Southland Gallery and it makes a powerful case for<br />
the regions’ place in New Zealand art history, he says.<br />
“On a national level, these artists have gone to outlying<br />
areas of our nation – that is where this really strong art,<br />
not all of it totally but a hell of a lot of it, has come out,<br />
out of the regions and provinces.”<br />
ABOVE: Gregory O’Brien, ‘Poem in the Matukituki Valley I’, 2018, acrylic on canvas, 915 × 1220mm.
Change language