The Return Home

In 1986 the internationally acclaimed museum exhibition Te Maori returned to New Zealand after receiving great acclaim from audiences in several US Museums.

It was the first blockbuster exhibition ever to be dispatched from this country's shores and fittingly, featured Maori Taonga (treasures) drawn from throughout NZ.

The decision was made to extend the exhibition for a further two years and display it in the country's major galleries and museum, hence the title Te Maori - Te Hokianga Mai (The Return Home).  It proved to be even more successful in its home country, with some 920,000 visiting it in the four carefully selected venues.

I had the pleasure of being a 'cultural roadie' for those two years, travelling to the venues in Wellington, Dunedin, Christchurch and Auckland with our small installation team (pictured above). That's me at the top of the ladder, the 'hired muscle' holding the heavy end!

Ross Ritchie is a highly respected New Zealand painter and was at that time the chief exhibition designer for the Auckland city Art Gallery.  Dave Rapp worked with Ross and was a lighting specialist.  Murray Lyndon was from the then National Museum in Buckle Street, Wellington and a virtuoso at making display mounts. Karl Peters, an expatriate Dutchman was the senior Conservator at the Auckland Museum and Helen Telford represented the Dunedin venue - the Otago Museum. She was the Exhibitions Officer at the Dunedin Public Art gallery and I held a similar position at the Robert McDougall Art Gallery in Christchurch.

It is fair to save that we had a lot of fun together, staying in The Establishment hotels up and down the country (the exhibition was sponsored by Lion Breweries who owned this hotel chain) and eating in their Cobb and Co restaurants.  We go to know their menu so well most of us could recite in with our eyes closed.  In Dunedin and independent survey was being conducted of diners and one of the questions was "How many times have you ordered our Hot Fudge Sundae?.  In response I wrote "96 times" which was probably an understatement but no doubt skewed the results significantly.

As with any touring group, relationships at home suffered any new ones were formed along the way.  Ross teamed up with Wendy , a museum colleague from Dunedin, Dave and Helen became an item, Karel Peters forged a relationship with the US curator Carol O'Biso who was staying NZ during the exhibition period and I  (who was single at the time) met my wife in Wellington when we were based there.

We used to joke that Murray (who was gay) was the only one in a stable relationship; with Phil.  Tragically that too disintegrated and Murray died of Aids a few years later.

Ross (foreground) and I (at rear) in typical 'serious pose'. Dave Rapp is at left. We were having an
evening meal at the home of the Exhibitions Manager of the Dunedin Museum and his Japanese wife

Other memories include our stay at the old St George Hotel in Wellington.  It its time it had been a showstopper but by the time we got there the rooms were somewhat shabby from decade of sports team use. I hardly slept as my room on one of the higher floors fronted Boulcott Street and an infamous House of Ill Repute at #11.  I was constantly woken up by the ladies of the night screaming at their customers, night fights and police sirens.

Painting With Passion

For three years in the later 1970's and early '80's I headed an art school in Papua New Guinea. I taught people such as Larry Santana (known as Larry Mike in those days) who went on to become and important and internationally regarded painter from PNG.

My Niugini Days blog covers these times but I was reminded of them today when looking at the local arts calendar in Auckland.

A contemporary gallery is featuring the work of Jeffry Feeger, one of the new and emerging artists from Papua New Guinea.  His painting style is featured in this short video below.




What I loved about about this portraiture was the passion exhibited in the painting and the 'studio assistant' at the beginning of the process!  The choice of colour palette reflects the more traditional 'groun' (local clays) used in PNG body art.

Being passionately involved in your subject matter was something I always emphasised as an art teacher and tried to follow in my own work.

Rabaul - Acrylic on canvas. Roger Smith 1981

Of Cabbages And Kings

Image via WikipediaThe is nothing less edifying than a grown man indulging in a bout of cabbage wrestling in the local supermarket.

Cabbage wrestling for the initiated, is the activity of attempting to bag an over large cabbage into a plastic bag torn from the dispenser.

It is Murphy's law that the bag in question is always a centimetre less in circumference than the cabbage.

Yesterday I watched a a large middle aged Russian mouth Slavic obscenities as he attempted this feat.

The highlight of the performance was when his second finger got trapped between the cabbage and the inside of the bag.  His wife watched with disdain as she moved on to the nuts section.

The Russian was in the act of "helping", a singularly male pursuit; something I have often been guilty of myself.

"Helping" has been known to engender a truly terrifying display of feminine angst especially when the male spots "specials" which are not on the shopping list.

Today is not a shopping day and there has been a break in the weather.  Our morning consisted of a drive around old haunts only to discover that there has been changes since 2006. 

The large Asian warehouse that we bought foodstuffs from is no more and has been replaced with a warehouse full of cheap Chinese tat.

Oyster and hoisin sauces have been replaced by racks of women's undergarments in a mind boggling range of hues.  Floor to ceiling stacks of sand shoes and mass produced tin toys are everywhere.

A half an hour later and we were sitting in our car on Mission Bay's waterfront, looking at the volcanic cone of Rangitoto.  The Spirit of Adventure's schooner motored past on the horizon and there was a squally blow coming from the direction of Waiheke Island.

Winter - Bucklands Beach

Click on the flip book and then click again to see the larger images

This afternoon saw the temperature rise from an overnight 2 degrees to a 'balmy' 11 degrees in the sun!  

I took a stroll down the hill to Buckland's Beach which is a mere block away from the house we are renting in Auckland at the moment.

It was peaceful with the wading birds active in the shallows, searching for pip and other shellfish.  The old volcanic cones of Auckland were visible on the skyline.

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Hollow Echoes

Image via Wikipedia

This is the final week in our condo and with all the boxes gone the place has a hollow echo.  I have never tired of looking out our lounge window at the changing Singapore skyline, with its steady procession of cranes as new buildings rise from their foundations.

I have watched the tropical storms come and go and felt the building reverberate to the sound of the thunder.

The night view is particularly attractive with the various coloured lights from the high rises much in evidence.

Just this morning I watched a large raptor ride the the thermals above Margaret Drive as it searched for prey hundreds of feet below.

These past three and a half years have been my first experience of apartment living. While I have enjoyed the change, it is fair to say that my wife has regarded it as a form of penal servitude and longs for the quietness of New Zealand. She is a Singaporean and has not enjoyed coming back whereas I have always felt a strong affinity to Singapore, going back to the 1980's when I first  visited.

To put it into context, I doubt I would enjoy going back to the town of my birth to live either.  Not that there is anything wrong with Waitara I hasten to add, it is just that we have nothing in common and the childhood memories are largely of wild west coast beaches and burning black sand in the heat of summer.  I have moved on.

The BBC World Service is broadcasting in the background as I write this.  What a marvelous thing quality radio journalism is.  It has keep us connected with the wide world during our time here; in a way that local media simply does not.

I only hope that we can get the World Service in New Zealand.  I recall it was privately sponsored by a wealthy NZ businessman several years ago but I am not sure if the service still exists?  There is a web site which says that the service still exists on 810 AM so here's hoping.