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Lot #51 - Ralph Hotere

  • Auction House:
    Mossgreen-Webb's
  • Sale Name:
    The Warwick & Kitty Brown Collection
  • Sale Date:
    17 May 2017 ~ 6.30pm (NZ time)
    18 May 2017 ~ 6.30pm (NZ time)
  • Lot #:
    51
  • Lot Description:
    Ralph Hotere
    Observation Point Port Chalmers
    stainless steel, torched and ground, rivets, 1989
    1070mm x 1215mm
    signed Hotere and dated '89 lower right; original Goodman Suter Biennale 1990 label inscribed HOTERE RALPH 27 Harbour Tce Port Chalmers, OBSERVATION POINT PORT CHALMERS, STAINLESS STEEL TORCHED AND GROUND, $8,000, Ralph Hotere in artist's hand?affixed verso
  • Provenance:
    Accompanied by original Goodman Suter Biennale 1990 Artist's Submission Form, inscribed by Ralph Hotere.
  • Exhibited:
    Goodman Suter Biennale 1990, The Suter Art Gallery, Te Aratoi O Whakatu, Nelson, 3 February - 4 March 1990.
  • References:
    ILLUSTRATED: Hotere, Baker, Kriselle with O'Sullivan, Vincent. Ron Sang Publishing, 2008, p. 270.
  • Notes:
    ESSAY: Long-time printer of RalphHotere's lithographs, Marian Maguire, recalls that, when she was first working with him in 1984 in the print studios at the University of Canterbury, he "took advantage of the art school's sculpture workshop, borrowing the grinder and acetylene torch and producing some beautiful stainless steel paintings (!)The early 1980s was a period of high experimentation for Hotere, whose work had habitually engaged with unusual materials and techniques, such as his use of spray-painted car duco. He now shifted from those insistently flat planes into using found materials with more three-dimensional potential, such as corrugated iron or window frames, and the abraded and burnt stainless steel of Observation Point Port Chalmers, also referred to as Oputae. Hotere achieves extraordinary visual effects with his unconventional tools - texture and chiaroscuro emerge in grinding, cutting into and buckling the metal surface, with lines and edges scorched and burnished gold and purplish blue with an acetylene torch. There are also further colours reflected in the polished stainless steel, as the warped surface affords fleeting glimpses of the viewer and the environment. The work was produced at a time when Hotere was (unsuccessfully) resisting the reclamation of part of Observation Point, where his studio stood and which had also been a pā and burial site, for facilities for the harbour board. It shows a profile of the headland brutally cut off and scored out with vehement parallel lines. A favoured Hotere symbol of heart and cross, referring back to his Catholic upbringing, streams liquid - tears or even blood - at the desecration. And, beyond the diagonal slash and the unrelenting line of dots piercing the surface, an inscription is ground delicately into the metal - "and daisies falling" - the wild flowers exterminated together with the ravaged ground. But they also suggest the hope of regeneration; in the words of poet Cilla McQueen, Hotere's wife: "Tough white daisies cover scars eventually". [2] Elizabeth Rankin [1] Maguire in Empty of shadows and making a shadow: Lithographs by Ralph Hotere, Christchurch Art Gallery, 2005, p. 9. [2] McQueen, 'Dark Matter', in Ian Wedde (ed.), Ralph Hotere, Black Light, Te Papa Press, 2000, p. 46.
  • Estimate:
    NZ$60,000 - 100,000
  • Realised Price:
    *****

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  • Category:
    Art

This Sale has been held and this item is no longer available. Details are provided for information purposes only.



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