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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen-Webb's
• Sale Name:
  Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
• Sale Date:
  29 Nov 2016 ~ 6.30pm (NZ time)
• Lot #:
  31
• Lot Description:
  Ralph Hotere
  Black Window: Towards Aramoana
  acrylic, burnished steel and lead nails in Colonial villa frame, 1983
  930mm x 915mm
  title inscribed Black Window: Towards Aramoana , signed in paint and dated '83 lower left; inscribed Port Chalmers Painting , signed and dated 83 in paint pen verso
• Provenance:
  Private collection, Australia; Purchased by the current owner from Brooke Gifford Gallery, Christchurch in 1984.
• Exhibited:
  Ralph Hotere: Recent Paintings, Brooke Gifford Gallery, Christchurch, 1983.
• Notes:
  Featuring highly reflective steel, large lead-head nails and a wooden sash-window frame, Black Window: Towards Aramoana is instantly recognisable as the work of iconic New Zealand artist Ralph Hotere. More specifically, it is representative of his Aramoan a series, from the early 1980s, which opposed the planned aluminium smelter at Aramoana, just north of Dunedin. In conjunction with several other artists, performers and psychologists, Hotere focused his artistic output from this period on the preservation of the unique natural ecology of the sand dune spit, and the small settlement towns of Aramoana and Te Ngaru. A firm sense of time and place is branded into the Aramoana works through Hotere's use of locally salvaged materials and, in pieces like Black Window: Towards Aramoana , the geographical specificity is carefully reinforced through the inscribed title. As with most work by Hotere that features text, its inclusion here is measured and poignant. While the lines "Towards Aramoana" and "Hotere Port Chalmers '83" are all executed in Hotere's own hand and are orientated the right way, the words "Black Window" have been purposefully written backwards, slightly obscuring the legibility and placing the focus firmly on looking at, and towards, Aramoana. As well as anchoring the artwork in the Aramoana of 1983, Hotere's material choices in Black Window: Towards Aramoana add a considered and complex aesthetic dimension. As is the case with many works in the series, the viewer is greeted by a piece of polished steel that glistens, shimmers and seems to undulate, subtly reflecting the changes occurring in the exterior world of light and form. In the very centre of this dynamic panel, Hotere has carved a linear pattern/design using a blowtorch. These perpendicular lines remain elusive and ambiguous; potentially, they are the remnants of a truncated cruciform - a motif that repeatedly makes its mark on Hotere's artistic practice. Or, perhaps, they speak to the physical act of crossing out, of erasing the landscape view that will cease to fill the window frame if the smelter consortium is allowed to wreak havoc on the port of Dunedin. Either way, burnt into the metal, the two lines further activate the steel ground by altering its thickness and denying the surface luminosity, which is similarly achieved by the border of nails that beads along three of the edges. In marked contrast to this metallic segment are the painterly strips of black, white/grey and red that demarcate its edge. Roughly brushed in places, areas of gestural marks and scumbling abound, while the grey section also supports a quantity of stencilled letters and numbers, which have been applied in reverse and in the correct alphabetical or numerical order. Beyond the painted borders is the wooden frame, which, by its very nature, remains impervious to changes in light or activity beyond itself. The markedly evocative variance of materials in such works as this have been aptly captured by Cilla McQueen, a poet and Hotere's second wife, who wrote of Hotere having ;taken the hardest stuff he can find and forced steel into silky disappearing light held in by weathered velvet wood jewelled with nails. Jemma Field
• Estimate:
  NZ$60,000 - 90,000
• 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.