ANTHONY DAVIES–NOMAD

Border Crossings

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Dedicated to     

Edith Ruth Davieson the anniversary of her 80th Birthday

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WAHINE TOA

He wahine toa He whenua kee He waa anoo He kaakano i ruia mai I ngao kaawai oranga O Ranginui Na te ringa one kura O Papatuanuku Tau ihuko Te Whenua Ko Aotearoa

Cherished woman Another land Another time A woman Spiritual Emotional strength The seed nurtured by Sky Planted by the brown hand of Earth And scattered across the oceans To meet here in Aotearoa New Zealand

Haare Williams 14 August 2001

Wahine Toa–woman of emotional and spiritual strength Whenua –land, placenta, woman, birth and rebirth Ranginui–Sky Father Papatuanuku–Earth Mother Kaawai orangi–health of people through land, sky, all nature Ringa–hand One Kura–the fertile soils of Creation

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4 . . . . . . . . . Preface Professor Michael Dunn

Essays

6 . . . . . . . . . . Nomad Carole Shepheard

17. . . . . . . . . From Vanity Fair to Eden ? (Part 1 and 2) Dr Joanne Drayton

27. . . . . . . . (Re)Making the New Zealand Landscape Edward Hanfling

39. . . . . . . . List of Works

40. . . . . . . Biographical Notes Anthony Davies

54 . . . . . . . . About the Authors Professor Michael Dunn Dean of Elam School of Fine Art, University of Auckland, New Zealand

Carole Shepheard Artist and Associate Professor Elam School of Fine Art, University of Auckland, New Zealand

Dr Joanne Drayton Lecturer in Art History and Theory, Unitec Polytechnic, Auckland, New Zealand

Edward Hanfling Tutor, Department of Art History, University of Auckland, New Zealand        

Border Crossings

ANTHONY DAVIES–NOMAD

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PREfAcE

Professor Michael Dunn

first met Anthony Davies when he came to Auckland in 1994 to take up a position as Visiting Artist at the Elam School of Fine Arts. The School had just been externally reviewed and was in the throes of a major upheaval. There had been criticism of insularity and of the School’s tradition of employing its own graduates rather than looking offshore. I had just been appointed Head of the School with a mandate to introduce change, especially in the staffing area. Anthony’s appointment was made in that context.

A senior staff member in Printmaking had just retired and this provided the opportunity to introduce a new person from a different background. The School advertised internationally and Anthony Davies applied. His credentials were impressive in terms of his training as well as in terms of his exhibition record. Unlike most of the Elam staff, he had travelled, taught and exhibited widely in Europe and the United States. We had the funds to offer him a short-term contract and to our delight he accepted and came to the School that year.

While the Printmaking section was still in its old premises in the original Elam studio building, Anthony Davies was undeterred by its shortcomings and put the emphasis on making prints. He brought energy and professionalism to the Print Section and quickly had a profound effect on some previously disgruntled students who responded to his approach. I recall him telling me early on how much he had been impressed with Auckland, with the School and with the students. It seemed that while he was stimulating us, he, in turn, was seeing the beginnings of a new phase in his life. He applied for the long term position in Printmaking which carried with it the Head of Section. As things turned out Anthony did not get that position which went to one of New Zealand’s most experienced practitioners. But Anthony had decided to return to Auckland after his Visiting Professorship in Florida during 1995. Since 1996 he has been resident in New Zealand.

As he has told me, being here has not been easy for him as an artist. His British work was devoted to themes specific to his background in Belfast. This was not really relevant to his newly-adopted country and he had to change direction and rethink his work. His prints of the past several years show that change of subject, style and outlook. While Anthony Davies has not yet become a familiar name in New Zealand art circles, he has been exhibiting and teaching. He has also been stimulating discourse around printmaking and his own practice. This is sorely needed in a field often noted more for technical debate than for discussion about content and purpose.It could be argued that printmaking has been marginalised in recent times in New Zealand. Very little important work has been visible in print media outside the art school context. It is to be hoped that Anthony Davies will help change that.

There was a time in the 1960s when leading New Zealand artists made prints. One thinks of Colin McCahon, Gordon Walters and Pat Hanly among painters who made successful forays into printmaking. Others like Robin White were known more for their prints than their paintings. But times have changed. Today we find an experienced printmaker like Stanley Palmer spending much of his time on paintings rather than the prints which established his reputation in the 1960s. Clearly, with new technology available, modern printmakers have the resources to produce contemporary and stimulating works. If they do there will be a market for their prints. Then there will be a renaissance of printmaking in New Zealand.

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Top: Epitaph For An Unknown Grave –1 Below: Epitaph For An Unknown Grave –2

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BORDER cROSSINGS ANTHONY DAVIES - NOMAD

The contemporary print is simultaneously one of the most successful and one of the most disparaged art forms of our time. Susan Tallman

he art of print is fraught with contradictions. While firmly rooted in the physical nature of artmaking, it maintains an elusiveness that is both compelling and intriguing. For some, printmaking’s formal components–ink, paper, matrix and press–influence expression and meaning while for others, the relationship is a charged, visceral response to tactile surfaces where formal strategies and thematic notions become inseparable. Whatever position is taken, printmaking is a desirable medium for many artists in this country and has a great number of practitioners and followers.

The work of British-born artist Anthony Davies, now resident in Auckland, New Zealand, reflects this situation through the multiplicity of professional and artistic concerns faced by one of our most serious and dedicated printmakers. Davies, outspoken advocate for the discipline and uncompromising practitioner, presents his audience with images that challenge notions of an ever- changing world. He confronts subject and object in an unflinching way in his recent ‘hybrid’ prints and while these works extend an established and reputable practice, Davies is obviously prepared to use his somewhat ‘ill-at-ease’ demeanour and ‘dislocation’ as motivation for new and challenging work. The introduction of the self portrait sits deliberately tenuously alongside a background of land colonisation and social alienation. A platform therefore has been created for renewed discourse around the notion of print as a means of both individual struggle and a way of reflecting and investigating personal, social and political concerns. While a relative newcomer to this country, Davies is not an ambivalent observer but an active protagonist who reveals much of his deeply held beliefs through an outpouring of work and a desire to engage with concerns that face printmaking–and printmakers – today.

While one can go back to several exhibitions that focus on topical events, social attitudes and political dissent, more recent work has concentrated on a personal search for finding a ‘place to stand’. In God’s Own Country and Journey Through the Takapau Plains (2000) Davies showed a pre-occupation with unpeopled, raw landscapes, signifiers of death and reworked objects that acted as carriers of local history. This detachment from the people who occupied the land he was portraying was not because he was oblivious to what had transpired in and on these historical sites, but because one would imagine he wished to maintain the right to ‘bear witness’. These works, resonant with images that depict poverty, and a feeling of menace, are altered not by the inclusion of himself as both narrator and observer but by the ways in which he complicated a linear reading of each work.

A past position of remaining ‘distant’ from the field of activity has changed dramatically in his new body of work with the introduction of the self portrait. While Davies is well known for his figurative work, the insertion of his own image into a complex arrangement of symbols and signs is important in numbers of ways. He has consciously presented himself as a somewhat disinterested observer but

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also as an irreverent actor, waiting for the camera to record and the lines to come together. On the surface the highly graphic and reduced image of the artist suggest an almost irreverent participation in the overall narrative. On closer reading however, the conscious placing of the image (and the role he is enacting) allows the viewer to engage with the artist’s position on a changing social and political landscape. It is clearly biographical. It is clearly confrontational. And it is clearly uncompromising.

In countries like Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom where Davies has lived and worked, contemporary printmaking reflects developments in other art fields and has an established critical presence with a refined, recognisable vocabulary. In New Zealand an ambivalence towards images produced within printmaking and a distinct waning of market popularity has resulted in an anxious existence and an unpredictable future.

While I accept that print exists as part of our visual landscape through its inherent powers of reproduction and is an essential component in the understanding of how visual culture impacts on our daily lives, I am unconvinced that in New Zealand there has been any identifiable shift from a marginal position to one where print is now fully embraced. The critical issues inherent in this marginalisation defy a logical beginning and a conclusive ending. Like printmaking itself, a discursive approach to writing about it is also one of constant mediations. Because little attention has been given to print’s nomadic nature and the impact this would have, should it become part of wider contemporary debate, the position of understanding of the critical issues in contemporary New Zealand printmaking is somewhat fraught for the average viewer. As no doors have been flung open for print to ‘wander’ into, the suggestion that print has become ‘marginalised’, only touches on the problem.

The lack of print visibility is another key concern and evidenced in an ‘establishment absence ‘. Print has from time to time been referred to as a ‘flourishing ecology’ but continued rejection from critical areas of informed debate, where information can be accumulated and evaluated, indicates a far from healthy atmosphere. For print to have the same degree of success its counterparts have experienced over the past years, there must be an identifiable presence within the visual arts and an energetic place from which to operate and engage with the wider field. Where photography has thrived and taken centre stage, questions as to why print is lagging so far behind must be seriously addressed.

International critics and American writers Ruth Weisberg, Susan Tallman, John O’Brien and Deborah Wye agree that nowhere has there been established a strong enough critical framework for print, a framework that would allow it to fully enter into contemporary debate and occupy a recognised place alongside other accepted creative fields. The social impact of reproduction and the topical areas of current discourse like appropriation, hybrid multi-disciplinary approaches, new technologies and recent attention given to body politics and visual culture, could easily have accommodated print with its long history and associations in both the fine and commercial art arenas.

It would not be too dramatic to suggest that the marginalisation of print involves the artist, the sector and the market and that these are the main protagonists and that culpability is shared. What is apparent is the way these overlap, intersect and impact on one another to such a parasitic extent that even while considering them issue by issue, point by point and detail by detail, there is no clear delineation or understanding possible. While no longer considered an isolated technical speciality, printmaking has still failed to attract the attention needed for it to be recognised alongside other established disciplines like, for example, painting and more recently photography. This lack of a critical framework is considered a real problem not only in New Zealand but in other countries as well. The continued absence of an infrastructure for print further compounds the problem for New Zealanders and forces printmakers into a defensive position–survival mode if you will.

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Top: Epitaph For An Unknown Grave–3 Below: Journey Through Takapau Plains–1

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The fears that arose in the 1960s that led to the desire to create a definitive statement about what constituted an ‘original print’, continues today. The drawing of distinctions between commercial and artistic ‘original’ printing, between hand produced and machine produced, still prevails, but the real damage to printmaking has been in attempts to place a fixed definition on originality. In today’s climate, to define is to control and thereby to limit the potential of the medium.

A print can never be as ’original’ as a painting, so whether or not you call it ‘an original print’ it will never be original enough. Susan Tallman

The pressure to accept ‘originality’ as a value in itself has placed the medium in an impossible situation and one which continues to disadvantage through ongoing marginalisation and isolation. The real problem for the medium is that many critics and writers are ignoring the breadth of print and adhering to the old ‘original’ print definition, a dated and less than useful position to maintain in light of where art practice stands today. This safe position is also a disengaged one. There are openings here for a rigorous and informed debate that could encompass issues of representation, identity and narrative that would propel print into a dynamic contested position –in essence, an expanded field.

The point at which printmaking initially became marginalised was in the privileging of medium and the segregation of ‘genuine’ and ‘mass’ culture. It appears we are now free to dislodge, dethrone and demystify other historical ‘truths’ like that of the exclusive pact between ‘genius and originality’ and ‘production and reproduction’. It is this discursive space that printmaking can operate successfully in and begin to construct an even playing field; however, it needs players and it needs a critical framework.

Journey Through Takapau Plains–2

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There is no value to be gained in attempting ‘another’ redefinition of print as some have suggested. At this stage, the beginning of the 21st century, it is more important to give up completely the notion that printmaking can be defined in the traditional sense and acknowledge that even though the ‘printmaking in the expanded field’ debate has been around for many years, most of the discussion still centres on process and technology, thereby remaining ‘within’ the field and reluctant to critique it from outside. When discussing printmaking as an expanded field we need to be talking about it as an expanded concept–a postmodern concept if you will. Whereas previously original and reproductive roles were regarded as opposing categories, within postmodernism they become complementary possibilities. Discussion therefore needs to address printmaking in terms of its function in the transformed cultural field.

Before, the boundaries which defined the activities of printmaking were limited to technical categories. The print was defined as the map and not the territory the map describes. The function of language in defining printmaking was to act as a signifier, to name a phenomenon, to break the subject down into its technical processes. However, the meaning of language lies not in the definition of words, but in communicating their broader abstract relationships. Language is not static but evolving. Today, print is not a technique, a category or even an object; it is a language of evolving ideas. Just as language cannot be defined as alphabets, words, definitions, or syntax, print cannot be defined by its function, its philosophical usage, the evolution of the idea and the images it spawns.

While New Zealand’s early print history closely parallels that of Australia, current research shows the latter moving ahead rapidly, with input from all concerned sectors–artists, teachers, curators, galleries, funding bodies, writers and critics. The enthusiasm for open and transparent debate in that country has left New Zealand printmakers standing on an empty workshop floor, lacking an infrastructure and a framework within which change can occur. Most New Zealand printmakers reflect nostalgically on a past era when prints were topical and popular. That, however, was thirty years ago and the ensuing lack of interest in prints was only briefly interrupted by a slight flurry of excitement in the mid-eighties, when the market demanded prints for both the domestic and corporate arena. Reproduction technologies inherent in printmaking were open to misinterpretation and resulted in some highly damaging market manipulation. According to Dr Peter Shand,“ the marginalisation of print within the larger economy of the art market, although to the advantage of consumers, can operate negatively for the artist.” This was indeed the situation for printmaking.

In New Zealand, printmaking remains a modest medium where popular and commercial images flood the market and where critical, social and political works fail to hold a substantial position, primarily through lack of an intellectual frame of reference. The fascination with print is mainly historical, and because of its technical functions and mysteries. An identification with process almost always accompanies written material, and is often laboriously explained by the writer/reviewer to a somewhat disinterested and unaffected audience. This descriptive approach to process is unparalleled in most other disciplines and while this ‘how to’ material may be intended to contextualise a work, it invariably draws attention to the wizardry of process and emphasises technique over concept. Many appear to be complicit in this–artists, professional workshops, galleries, academic institutions, art educators, curators, writers and collectors.

How then does one begin to address the problem when the odds are so stacked?

The traditional boundaries of print are not nearly as clear as they used to be and with other disciplines taking up many of the important aspects of printmaking like seriality and codification, printmaking has been pushed further into the margins with many printmakers succumbing to what is discussed as a ‘loss of voice’, technical paranoia and an uncomfortable position with regard to contemporary discourse. When Robert Nelson delivered a paper at the Second Australian Print

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Symposium in Canberra in 1992 he offended many by stating that printmakers have not been able to persuade the wider art community that their art is “hospitable to sustained discourse.” For him, the problem lay in the unwillingness of printmakers to participate in current discourse, to engage in interpretation, speculation and self reflexivity which, he says, lies at the heart of the craft. It is this position, this self imposed isolation, he says, that demotes their product and alienates them from on-going analysis, debate and critique –in other words, taking an effective position in the contemporary world.

For Anthony Davies, this lack of discourse has left him in intellectual limbo-land. His clear thinking and active commitment to the field of printmaking is not a comfortable place to reside. When he clearly articulates his concerns and expresses them, there has been sustained silence and a lack of critical debate. He is, however, not alone with this response but he may well be the most determined and uncompromising. His energy for creating a supportive, yet challenging atmosphere for print is admirable and it must be hoped that his movement into the front line is not without followers. We sense he is determined to place print on an intellectual platform as it is here that constructive and rigorous dialogue will take place. We also sense it is his determination to see printmaking in an accessible and dynamic way that will engage others and create a voice for print.

Because Davies believes that printmakers are unwilling to construct a framework of ideas and concepts that would locate their practice in relation to the larger arena we are left in some doubt as to whether or not such a framework actually exists for the work being produced by many New Zealand printmakers. This may well be because Davies was active in this intellectual field for some time in England and that the debate took place at a time when art was being argued openly, enthusiastically and vigorously.

At the same time in New Zealand, discussion by printmakers focused predominantly on establishing and proving legitimacy within the historical definition of what was an original print. Although this was the prime reason for the establishment of the Print Council of New Zealand in the 1960’s, the question of ‘originality’ has never really gone away. Once this question was seemingly adequately answered by those holding positions of ‘authority’, New Zealand printmakers ceased to critically discuss their medium or to push it beyond the expected. With the parameters of print safely established and protective boundaries put in place, discussion about its role within culture, ceased. This dilemma was, and indeed still is, matched by the inadequacy of museums, curators, galleries, critics, writers and historians to investigate new developments and to initiate debate, both visual and verbal, that would see a revival and resurgence of interest in this art form. As Ruth Weisberg suggests, the establishment of a theoretical ‘framework of ideas and concepts’ would have ensured printmaking a strong presence and ready to occupy a pivotal position in contemporary discourse.

Printmaking, by its very reproductive nature, challenged the notion of the unique object. Davies, eager to continue working within the parameters of the limited edition, uses images in such a way that they can emerge over a period of time in a multiplicity of ways. Images are consistently repeated in works but in a symbolic and iconic way. It is the ways in which he re-installs them in a variety of print contexts that gives us some insight into his thinking and the ideas he wishes to explore. In Epitaph: For an Unknown Grave he clearly has positioned himself as an individual with multiple personalities and characters; the bad boy (tattoos, earrings and jacket), the distanced observer (the lazy cigarette smoker), the indefinable artist (double portrait), the witness (direct gaze). While these roles are clearly not created just for this series of work, they are consciously constructed to represent ‘this’ artist as subject and in doing so create a wider dialogue about the role of the artist in society.

Never a safe place to be. Never a supported one. For Anthony Davies, it is the only place he can inhabit.

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Top: Journey Through Takapau Plains–3 Below: Journey Through Takapau Plains–4

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Postmodernism moves to deconstruct the myth of originality, involving discourse on replication, copying, appropriation and imitation at the same time as aiming to reveal the strategies of Modernism. This was achieved through an interrogation of its own devices through agitation and disruption. On a more human level, it was about creating a climate where there were no limits to the way people worked, what they had to say and the manner in which they expressed it.

With regard to printmaking, artists saw a relief from the anxiety of defending the fine art print as an ‘original multiple.’ The dualities of print, its original and reproductive roles, may in effect provide an advantage for printmakers and these opposing positions are well accommodated within this movement, especially where it aligns itself to the exchangeability of word forms and images. This source for, and application of print, not only relates the transference of image, but acts as a metaphor for current understandings and interpretations of the postmodern. The complex interplay between critical theory, cultural and artistic practice provides a useful structure in which to identify the expanded role of print within contemporary discourse.

Many printmakers in New Zealand see print as an overlapping field. Past conventions like the limited edition had been established to define and constrain print production but recently print has extended its function as a communicator of information. The way this has activated critical discourse concerning the relationship between information, art, object and replication has been important for the discipline.

But this dialogue regarding future possibilities for print in New Zealand has seen limited participation by printmakers. The relationship of postmodernism to printmaking, and the possibilities for future involvement, appears to have had little impact on many. On one level there was an understanding of what postmodernism was/is in conceptual terms and who was involved, but on another level it was seen to be irrelevant to many individuals’ present concerns. The indication is that whilst there is a tacit acceptance, many fail to see how to ‘accommodate’ it or how it might ‘accommodate’ them.

Unfortunately it is these printmakers who wish to be included in contemporary debate, to be taken seriously as artists, to be represented in curated exhibitions and collections, yet do not seem to understand that an engagement in the intellectual and theoretical issues intrinsic to printmaking and its engagement with postmodernism is necessary for any re-alignment of media value and discourse.

Any attempt to redefine print and relocate it into contemporary debate becomes a double bind for many printmakers. Firstly, they are often accused of concentrating only on technical prowess and expertise and, secondly, they are criticised for a lack of participation in current debate. Robert Nelson strongly states that ‘yes’ printmakers can talk when it is about process but are totally inept when it comes to a sustained debate. This is not such a generalised criticism as first thought and of course it was harsh and antagonistic. As if by some perversity, some debate did get underway both in Australia and in New Zealand, as a response. He says:

Their talk is among themselves and lacks an inter-disciplinary life; it tends to the unspeculative; we miss the agonies about interpretation, abstraction, referentiality and (bizarrely and scandalously) the very reproducibility which lies close to the heart of the craft. It would seem logical to assume that the prints, rather than the printmakers’ talk, are responsible for this emptiness. Perhaps printmakers have not attracted the interest of theorists because they are not producing interesting items. But surely not.

Unfortunately, there is truth in this comment, despite its harshness and the way it alienated the very people it intended to inform. The alchemy of prints has long been a treasured component for

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printmakers and they in turn have thrived on being a guardian. A superficial fascination with the ‘look’ of a print and the mystery about its making is a journey backwards to the aesthetics of beauty and a return to formalist mastery. By not entering into new discourse, the audience, writers, collectors, galleries and museums are left in some doubt over the seriousness of the work.

While today’s approach to artmaking is predominately non-linear, discontinuous and fluid, it also allows for a challenging duality. Printmakers who want personal autonomy can be accommodated alongside others engaged in broader social and political issues with new theoretical options providing the context for works. Issues have embraced photography, advertising, mass communication, language and cultural studies. Examination of the past, a powerful interrogation of the present and the establishment of multiple sites are all there to be exorcised. Any failure to engage in debate is a failure to take advantage of the terrain that may well provide some of the answers for disgruntled and sceptical printmakers, for an ill-informed and superstitious audience and for critics who fail to clarify and differentiate the multiple practices of today’s emerging printmakers.

The engraver covers the burin handle with the palm of one hand, and with the fingers grasps the blade, which has two cutting sides forming a “V” just beyond the fingers........ As the engraver pushes the tip of the blade under the surface of

the metal, he brings pressure on the tool from the heel of his hand, and the removed metal spirals off the tip of the tool and curls away.

–ink, paper, metal, wood

Process or poetry? Despite the beauty in this writing, it is descriptive commentary like this that has been responsible for printmaking’s lapsed status as a competitive player in contemporary discourse. The majority of writing about this medium falls into the hands of well meaning enthusiasts but who are far from neutral or objective when it comes to discussing this particular area of expression. Maybe they can be forgiven for falling into the same trap as those who have chosen this field of creative expression, the makers, but it must also be said that this type of reportage, no matter how seductive and mesmerising to the reader, does little for the growth of the discipline or its reputation.

Without the institutional support of critics, writers and curators, printmakers have been forced to defend their own positions and, understandably, have used the language they know and understand best–that of process. The dismissal that follows this ‘process debate’ does little to assist dedicated printmakers, for it concentrates attention on the way techniques, materials and tools are used to produce works. A history steeped in the artisan aspects of printmaking which rewards skill and manual dexterity, is difficult to ignore.

The emphasis on the material and physical demands of the medium was used in opposition to that of the artists’ intentions, mental ‘processes’ and artistic considerations. Skill, technique, drawing expertise and medium specific characteristics are essential to the way artists work. While still contestable, these ‘process’ elements can contribute to new directions, critical discourse and the print’s potential as a newly contested field by looking at such realities as the affinity printmakers have with materials, surfaces and the matrix –in essence, a self critique at each stage of the journey.

Unlike other disciplines, these decisions can be physically traced, given an opening into the mysteries of their conception and making. Additions, deletions, abrasions, obliterations, scratchings and scrapings are all visible within many print processes and very often are left to form another layer of meaning. Perhaps this self-conscious honesty about the value of the processing of visual material is what feels so threatening. Through abrading, scouring, sublimation and obliterations, the past often returns to haunt the present. This process of transformation has always been important to painting, but has failed to be seriously considered within the context of print, despite the way in which images can be as fluid on metal as they are on canvas or in wax.

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Curiously (and on reflection predictably), speaking with Anthony Davies fails to answer these questions. The conversation rotates and revolves around the role and place of print in a contemporary context. Any conversation about his personal engagement with print is highly concentrated and passionately obsessive. Questions about technique, materials and process are deflected into articulate associations with personal imagery, social and political responsibilities and new conceptual directions. The man himself is somewhat enigmatic but always passionate.

For many, printmaking is rapidly evolving into a foreign medium, changing, claiming and inventing new processes as its own. So in addition to the ‘process and poetry’ argument we now have other contentious elements to deal with. The hybrid print (that which involves a range of processes, materials and interpretations) and those which use new technologies have marked a profound departure from what is seen as the ‘authentic’ original print. At the beginning of this millennium where new technological innovations are occurring on a daily basis, it is understandable that some artists want to investigate new possibilities and higher levels of image and print manipulation.

While most exhibiting printmakers have stayed within the established tradition of printmaking, others have turned to electronic imaging systems where existing images can be worked, re-worked again and persistently re-interpreted. Tools like the photocopier, the laser printer and the fax machine are used to explore the interface between print and technology, image and text and also “concepts of immediacy and topicality.” Many artists simply use the scaling possibilities of these tools to continually enlarge an image and push it into a more autographic ‘look’ while another group are more interested in the conceptual potential of the technology. There are many conceptual similarities between traditional printmaking and computer image generation. Both are based on the idea of making multiple copies from a single matrix. In traditional printmaking the matrix is a tangible ‘hard’ surface like a litho stone, able to be handled and touched in its three dimensional form . In computer imaging, however, the matrix is digital and thereby occupying four dimensional space.

Discussing a frame of reference for relating print to critical theory suggests three starting points: visual image as image, visual image as sign and visual image as perception. These terms indicate that printmaking is far beyond the convention called the fine art editioned print and indicates that print has always encompassed the personal, the intimate gesture and also the popular, the commercial and the political. By acknowledging that there is now an expanded definition of printmaking, it can be suggested that we might need to also expand the criteria used in the past for aesthetic judgement.

When addressing the work of Anthony Davies in order to define the visual image and clarify intention and meaning it is important to understand the importance of being ‘hands-on’ in both image gathering and processing. He draws, constructs, photographs, translates, interprets, maps, experiments, articulates, challenges and critiques every aspect of his artistic production. When it comes to commenting on the discipline he is somewhat a loner.

While not overlooking the responsibility of both the art sector and the art market as equal partners in the decline of support for print, over the past two decades the printmaking community have unconsciously contributed to their own marginalisation.

Davies believes that one way for printmakers to address this situation is to expand the awareness of print by occupying a dynamic position within contemporary art practice and by taking advantage of an established arena where critical dialogue occurs. As makers of images, he says, we have the potential to break new ground, upset the expectation of a slow death and engage in all that influences and impacts on our art production.

Any power that print may possess emerges from the unpredictable, from its eccentricities and from

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its evolution–from the work itself but also from the beliefs of the artist. This inevitably forces a change in the expectation for print, it challenges traditional thought and conventions, and presents some new understandings and readings.

The potential to “relocate our practice in relation to the larger intellectual paradigms of our time,” is not something that has been openly voiced by printmakers. There has been a reluctance to take control of the ‘voice’ of print and communicate directly with those whose influence, in many cases, far exceeds that of the artist.

However, this passive stand-off situation has prevented print from being included in lively discussion, debate and discourse and, difficult as it might be, the onus most probably needs to rest on printmakers themselves to take some action. Initially we require the impetus to move art beyond modernist critical evaluation, to then engage in dialogue related to issues like that of culture, technology, production, and communication. In essence, we require the creation of an expanded and radically transformed field.

The reluctance of many artists to talk about concepts, contradictions and considerations has a pervasive influence on attempts to establish credibility for the medium while isolating it from other forms of art practice. Understandably, the ‘how to’ knowledge comes much more readily than any self reflexivity or analysis. On its own, ultimately, this is a subordinate position and a disadvantaged one. For printmaking, questions like “What does it look like?” and “How is it made?” need to be replaced by “What does it mean?”

This framework will ensure that printmakers have a convincing voice within the art world and can take some control over their futures, at the same time as opening up the category of printmaking as a generative one. The absence of critical paradigms for the making, understanding, and appreciation of contemporary print, is matched by a scepticism that there may not be the energy, interest or commitment on the part of artists, curators and writers in New Zealand to establish such a framework.

Anthony Davies continues to make work that activates memory, questions identity and views culture through the eyes of an astute observer. But there is more. He is also responsible for initiating dialogue related to print and its role within the wider visual art arena; for the role of printmaking in a postmodern context and in engaging with an increasing widening audience. Davies understands that for print to thrive there must be a better understanding of the relevance to current art practice and the need to create a public forum for printmaking issues to be rigorously debated.

The history of print is a history of artists bridging the gap between private gesture and public commentary; this Anthony Davies does with integrity, insight and passion.

Carole Shepheard April 2001

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fROM VANITY fAIR TO EDEN?

Dr Joanne Drayton

...when they were... out of the wilderness, they presently saw a town before them, and the name of that town is Vanity, and at the town there is a fair kept, called Vanity Fair.... [and] at this fair are all such merchandise sold, as houses, lands, trades, places, honours, preferments, titles, countries, kingdoms, lusts, pleasures, and delights of all sorts as whores, bawds, wives, husbands, children, masters, servants, lives, blood, bodies, souls, silver, gold, pearls [and] precious stones...1

s John Bunyan’s Vanity Fair mirrored the falsities, corruption and moral decay of his time, so too did it present a compelling and evocative image of human transaction, energy and endeavour. While his reflections of human nature were intended to chastise and chasten, they also fascinated, and even flattered. In spite of the cynical, bitter revelations of humanity offered in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, it was a great and lasting success, suggesting that ‘vanity’ might play a much more complex role than just that of a metaphor for social and spiritual corruption. In fact, it seems that the richness and wastelands of the human condition, the good, the bad, the benevolent and the heinous have little meaning unless they are defined in the reflections of the artist’s eye. Society is reflected in the vision of the artist, the writer, the musician, who holds up a mirror to the world. It is the vanity of human nature that it craves its own reflection and, confronted with that image, it laughs, cries, blames and denies, but most importantly, its existence is defined and confirmed.

Writer John Bunyan spoke to the people of his time and was himself a product of that time, shaped by the social, geographical and historic forces of his age. His writing can be deemed universal, yet it is also particular to Britain and to working class evangelism of the mid-seventeenth century. Over three centuries later, printmaker Anthony Davies, working with themes of ‘social realism’ (with a warts-and-all honesty similar to that of Bunyan’s Progress), is equally a product of his time and place. For more than two decades (c. 1976-96) in the UK and Ireland, Davies’ prints have mirrored the destructiveness of political hypocrisy and social violence and the desperate heroism of the individual struggling to maintain integrity and self in the face of intense pressure to conform. These are the human struggles that Davies has reflected in print series and exhibitions such as A Rake’s Progress

A

Alfred Chapman watercolour. Collection of Hawke’s Bay Cultural Trust– Hawke’s Bay Museum, Napier.1

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1979-85 (Bolton, UK, 1985), No Surrender ‘86 (Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1986), The Comedy of Life (Dublin, Eire, 1989), A Tale of Two Cities (Derry, Northern Ireland, 1991), Young Punks (Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1992), Children of the North (Manchester, UK, 1992) and Games That People Play (Dublin, Eire, 1993).

Davies’ subject has been the inhabitants of the modern western city. Many of his particular landscapes have been urban Belfast, Derry and Dublin, derived from his ten year stay in Northern Ireland (1984-95) and stocked with an uncomfortably familiar breed of white trash–socially and politically dispossessed and struggling to define themselves in the face of over-whelming invisibility. Davies’ prolific out-put of work makes generalisation problematic. However, his prints and drawings, with few exceptions, are dramatic, jarring, and sometimes crowded to the extent of being almost claustrophobic. Figures propelled by urban angst struggle with themselves, their environment and each other in what feels like futile combat. There is a sense that these lives are as graffitied as the walls that contain their troubled existence. Indeed, Davies’ print series are passages in the discourse of the human condition, glimpses of people on their journey but, unlike Bunyan’s pilgrimage, their’s has no sense of progress, no sense of an end point or of salvation. What Davies’ images offer in the place of morality, judgement and religion is a profound belief in the integrity of the individual struggle.

While in Northern Ireland, Davies, an English born artist from Hampshire, operated as spectator, artistic outsider and commentator. The very position of being an alien and standing back, detached from the action, has the potential to clarify and crystallise vision. What distinguishes Davies’ Irish images from those he produced in Britain, is an acknowledgement of the fact that:

superimposed upon [the] common story of industrial decline is the particular history of the Irish conflict, involving violence and the destruction of property, intimidation and injury, the division of families by death and imprisonment. Belfast is a city predicated upon a clash of cultures, upon conflict between natives and settlers and their descendants, a conflict which has flared intermittently since the 17th century and most recently from the 1960s.2

Alfred Chapman sketch. Collection of Hawke’s Bay Cultural Trust– Hawke’s Bay Museum, Napier.

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It is Davies’ ‘otherness’, the fact that he was born and brought up in another culture, that enhances his objectivity. His print series takes no sides, offers no ‘goodies and baddies’, just a yawning sense of futility and loss at Northern Ireland’s shattered lives and bodies.

It is from a similar position of objective ‘otherness’ that Davies approaches his New Zealand subject matter. He first came to New Zealand as a visiting senior lecturer in print at Elam School of Fine Arts in Auckland 1994, and has lived in this country for much of the time since. In moving half-way round the world and making a dramatic shift in culture, climate and history, Davies stands as observer; an artist whose work now reflects the visual, social and political issues of another land. No country in its brief but divergent history of the visual arts has been more preoccupied with issues of national identity than New Zealand. A relatively young country in both its Maori and European traditions, New Zealand has set about defining its iconography of nationhood with all the ‘attitude’ and uncontrolled energy of a troubled teenager. In it s visual arts, particularly in the twentieth century, New Zealand has looked to measure its difference, to define itself as positive stands against negative, to distill its uniqueness.

It is fascinating, therefore, for a country so wound-up in issues of difference and identity to see itself reflected in the images of a new vision. How then has the work of Anthony Davies changed since he came to New Zealand? What aspects of this country’s ethos, its people, landscape, culture and history have marked their difference in his print-making. The most outstanding shift in Davies’ imagery must be his use of dramatic, unpeopled New Zealand landscape. In God’s Country (2000), seething urban landscapes are replaced by photographic images of empty tracts of countryside. “I have taken hundreds of photographs on my travels through the North Island,” Davies writes:

I consume images and stories, snippets and articles from the New Zealand Herald and T. V. programmes…. My morbid fascination with crosses on the roadside, burnt tree stumps and abandoned houses. As I do not drive I travel through the countryside hermetically seated in a bus or car - in a reverie, thinking of a James Belich depiction of New Zealand, an island of virgin forests, an immigrant settler population working the land. The reality is the remnants of a dying age – depopulation of the rural environment – decaying buildings and the residue of human travel. The ever increasing amount of garbage of a consumer society.3

Alfred Chapman watercolour. Collection of Hawke’s Bay Cultural Trust–Hawke’s Bay Museum, Napier.2

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Alfred Chapman sketch. Collection of Hawke’s Bay Cultural Trust– Hawke’s Bay Museum, Napier.

Davies’ Eden is certainly one that has known the fall. In photographic scenes of road carnage super-imposed over textured, rugged landscapes, we see the rural consequences of a driven consumer economy. Twisted, abandoned cars on the open road contrast ironically with passive road signs which should have shown the way. Lonely crosses become the highway’s Calvary, and in rural graveyards ornately carved Angel-figures stand as silent, sightless, sentinels, blindly optimistic of salvation for those who lie below. These are the images contained in Davies’ prints–this is New Zealand’s Vanity Fair and it is our vanity that makes us want to see them–this is familiar, this is our face reflected back.

“I impose my own narrative on what I have read or watched,”4 writes Davies. Inevitably, what he chooses to portray in his prints is a reflection of his own past, his interests and his journey. It is his position as outsider and observer that Davies celebrates in his latest series of high-coloured prints. Almost monumental in scale, these works depict larger-than-life photographic images of the artist himself, angst ridden and apprehensively viewing, or seemingly contemplating, images of God’s Country. Like the ‘white trash’ of his Northern Ireland images, Davies is socially and politically dispossessed and struggling to define himself in the face of over-whelming invisibility. Again, what Davies’ images offer the viewer in the place of faith in a Vanity Fair or false Eden, is a profound belief in the integrity of the individual’s struggle, especially the struggle of the artist. This exhibition is his journey, and these his thoughts on a trip from Taupo to Napier:

A solitary white cross bearing a garland of plastic flowers, a tribute to a dead loved one…. The feeling of green… major contrast of colours, movement of the clouds on the landscape. Even a stark, desolate landscape does not portray the imperfections that people possess.5

1 Martin Price, The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century. Oxford University Press: London, 1973, pp. 32-3

2 Roy Wallis, No Surrender 86, (Dublin, 1986)

3 A. J. Davies - project outline for Hinterland – New Zealand: The Power of the Land.

4 Ibid.

5 A. J. Davies, Reflections: Journey from Taupo to Napier, 22 July 2000.

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fROM VANITY fAIR TO EDEN–PART 2 Dr Joanne Drayton

…even to the end of the Valley, the way was all along set so full of snares, traps, gins, and nets here, and so full of pits, pitfalls, deep holes, and shelvings down there….just now the sun was rising…. Now I saw… that at the end of this Valley lay blood, bones, ashes, and mangled bodies of men, even of pilgrims that had gone this way formerly….1

This is how John Bunyan’s Pilgrim described his journey through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. It is a nightmare vision of a landscape full of horror and fear. It seems to be a physical place, yet it is a landscape constructed in the mind, a dream. The story of Pilgrim’s Progress is of course a story of travel, of a single man’s journey through his own interior landscape to find Truth, and Salvation through that Truth. Nothing is more threatening or dangerous to Bunyan’s Pilgrim than the black recesses of his own imagination. His landscape is haunted by projections of his own fear, the traps, pitfalls and deep holes are those of his own mind. If the journey, then, is an artifice, a made-up passage through a made-up place, surely the Truth and Salvation that lies at its end is equally a fabrication of the Pilgrim’s mind.

Probably Pilgrimage, maybe even Truth, but certainly journeys, are themes pertinent to Anthony Davies’ three print series Journey Through Takapau Plains, Waihi – In Memory Of and Epitaph For An Unknown Grave. Davies’ silkscreened, monumental size prints represent a journey through a landscape which is both tangible and recognisable, but also obviously private and internal. It is a landscape of interior and exterior space, one which has both a physical and psychological presence. Each print contains a photographically generated image of landscape screened on an often bright coloured ground, and acting as visual stations on a journey through the rural and urban landscape of New Zealand. These are not ideal images of scenic tracts of countryside, they are tightly cropped close-up sections of raw often mutilated bush and hill country. There is no mistaking it, this is land scarred by man and machinery. In amongst the stands of bush and trees are many trunks cut close to their roots by chain saws. This is land that has been plundered. It is a countryside now full of pits, holes and shelvings and on its valley sides are the bones and ashes of mangled trees. The poignancy of such scenes of decimation is made more acute by the inclusion in some of the images of road signs. A familiar innocently child-like picture of a puffing steam train offers an unexpectedly disturbing paradox. This is a journey, though, and while seeming paradoxical, these road signs are not incongruous.

Journey Through Takapau Plains, Waihi – In Memory Of and Epitaph For An Unknown Grave all have a sense of location and place, but to be a record of a journey they must also have a tourist, a traveller, an agent of human consciousness. Davies’ three print groups do in fact have a pilgrim, and his pilgrim looms large in each image. Davies’ protagonist is Davies himself. His single man on a journey is Davies projected as working class ‘white trash’. His addled fag-smoking figure seems every bit as wasted as the squares of landscape he looks at or ignores. Tattooed, tank-topped, chained, pierced, and pitted, Davies’ pilgrim is as marked by his interaction with human nature as the land. What can be known about this traveller? He is thoughtful, contemplative, brain-dead, thick, agonised, despairing, threatening and the other. Each image introduces a new scene for Davies as actor, a new station on his journey for Davies as traveller. While the mood of each image changes, one thing remains constant - Davies’s protagonist is not a participant in this landscape he is a viewer. He watches, he thinks, he imagines, but at all times he is an outsider, a passer-through. Davies’ protagonist proves that even British white trash, born in poverty thousands of miles away, raised on housing estates and fed punk-rock music, can find his way to New Zealand. Nihilistic, cynical, a true blue-printed punk, Davies’ pilgrim stands separate and disenfranchised from the myth that has long

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Top: Waihi–In Memory Of–1 Below: Waihi–In Memory Of–2

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Waihi In–Memory Of–3

suggested New Zealand might be God’s Country, the new world’s new Eden.

Davies’ punk pilgrim though, is far from being the first British-born traveller to pass through the rugged landscape of the North Island. An early English immigrant, Alfred Chapman, who is of particular interest to Davies himself, documented his life and journeys through the New Zealand landscape in an illustrated mid-nineteenth century diary. Chapman’s hand-written journal entitled The Illustrated Diary of Life in the Bush New Zealand by Alfred Steelpen, is a celebration of colonial settlement. His naive watercolour scenes of townships, of children playing with hoops, of farms and cultivation, make New Zealand seem domesticated, containable and safe. There is a manicured feel to many of his sketches. In no way does this land seem contested, fought over or anyone else’s. What does seem potentially threatening, though, and hangs heavily in these works is the sheer mass of the land. While all things human seem strangely small in scale, the land by contrast is immense. Humanity floats like fragile foam on an immense seascape of rolling hills. Many of Chapman’s works are horizontally formatted panoramas of space ringed and broken by only the occasional fence.

Chapman’s diary is a record of a single man’s journey as commentator, artist and ultimately citizen. Like Charles Heaphy, another colonial artist and writer, the time to capture experiences in image and text was often difficult to find. Artists in New Zealand worked to support themselves financially and their personal creative endeavours complemented their colonial life rather than became its sole purpose. Charles Heaphy was typical of many artists of the first half of the nineteenth century who combined art with farming, exploration and service to the militia. “I have taken to farming in good earnest, “ he wrote, “and am becoming learned in turnips and cauliflowers.”2 Equally, women who were supported by husbands or were of independent means tended to work as accomplished

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amateurs and those less fortunate taught or took illustrating commissions. Art, though mostly produced in an amateur context, was a life line. “I honestly think,” wrote artist Sarah Greenwood to one of her eight children in 1852, “a life with a specific object [in her case art]… is a far happier one than when passed in simply doing one’s share of sweeping and mending.”3

Chapman’s expressive pen and ink illustrations show how art sustained meaning and value for him in the face of a difficult existence in New Zealand. One image shows Chapman mounted on horse back returning home through torrential rain and driving winds, another long necked reluctant, rider-less horse in tow. The diary caption states: “Sunday 2nd July. Rained hard all day”.4 Another drawing shows an armed Chapman on his stomach stalking a group of primitively sketched pigs in the distance. In a successive image the successful hunter is depicted relaxed and seated on a dead bore, rifle in hand, dog by his side and nonchalantly smoking a pipe. “The Pig Hunter having a ‘Smoke’”, is the title, and the entry beneath reads: “Thursday for dog’s and pig’s meat; home by dark”.5 Another picture shows Chapman bare chested and washing in a basin. He stands in profile in a doorway –the inside of his hut is simple, spare and dark and outside the New Zealand bush is visible. Chapman’s life is clearly not one of luxury, his diary is a document of his daily struggle, but it is also a measure of its worth.

The difficulty, for British-born artists, of travelling and working in New Zealand changed only slowly. Leslie Greener, an ex-Indian army officer who came to New Zealand in the early 1920s and studied art at the Canterbury College School of Art in Christchurch, wrote of the problems he found: “The people are not kindly.... They seem mistrustful of anybody who is not going to a job or coming from one”.6 In New Zealand, ‘jobs’ were conceived of in conservative and conventional terms. The idea of an artist being usefully employed full-time at the task of making art was a foreign concept to most. The matter of an artist being a bohemian was largely inconceivable. The British and European cultural climate that had for centuries nurtured art for arts sake was essentially missing in New Zealand. “There is no genius loci in New Zealand,” wrote Greener to his wife, “It will want a thousand years of that to grow.... It is not the fault of the people (I think the plebs here are ungracious, but they are good enough at heart)....No, it is just that lack of the genus loci, and one has to come to a new country to discover, by feeling its absence.... The whole land is largely impersonal.... As far as I can see, N. Z. gives you nothing; she takes.”7 Greener lasted a few years in New Zealand before he left for Europe with his New Zealand bride.

Another British artist who would probably have agreed with Leslie Greener’s comments on New Zealand was La Trobe teacher Christopher Perkins. In 1921 William La Trobe was appointed to re-organise technical education in New Zealand and improve the quality of staff employed in these institutions. In 1929 Perkins was brought over from Britain to take up a key teaching position in Wellington. High expectations on the part of the Dominion’s art world matched equally impressive claims made by the artist. At his first public speech, Perkins, in his reply to the Chairman of the Technical College in Wellington, “Stress[ed] the need for a national art, based on a popular appreciation of art.... some motive force was needed, and he hoped, in time, to find that motive

Alfred Chapman watercolour. Collection of Hawke’s Bay Cultural Trust– Hawke’s Bay Museum, Napier.3

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force and help in its development.”8 It was Perkins’ desire that he should lead New Zealand in the birth of a new nationalist post-colonial art. His optimism, however, was shattered on the rocks of colonial conservatism. When Perkins returned permanently to Britain just four years later, he had indeed assisted in bringing about change in New Zealand art – but his determination was spent. The only work by Perkins left in the country after his departure was the haunting image Frozen Flames (1931). It is a painting of the bare bones of a dead tree, of a gray barren tracery of branches set against an over-cast sky. After his departure, Perkins seemed to disappear without trace–even this work remained in a private collection until 1962.

As Bunyan’s Pilgrim found that “at the end of [his] Valley lay blood, bones, ashes and mangled bodies of men, even of pilgrims that had gone this way formerly,”9 so too might Davies’ pilgrim, for New Zealand has been a desolate, destructive artistic landscape for many of its travellers. But Davies’ three print series represent more than just a metaphor for the artistic journey of Davies and his punk alter-ego. It is more than just a projection of Davies’ internal states of mind. Journey Through Takapau Plains, Waihi – In Memory Of and Epitaph For An Unknown Grave are about place. These are specific tributes to specific parts of New Zealand. Journey Through Takapau Plains documents Davies early expeditions to Napier and Hastings after arriving in New Zealand in 1996. They reflect his interest in colonial history, as this is the road to Norsewood, Woodville and Dannevirke –all places of early European settlement. But this is also the home of Maori, a final home, a resting place. A Maori graveyard is located in the low hills in the background of the landscape. These are images of journey, but also of journey’s end.

Waihi - In Memory Of uses landscape on the road between Auckland and Waihi. This is rural New Zealand and contained within it is death. A graveyard is again central to this series, but this time the tomb-stones mark the coming and going of mostly early European immigrants - men, women and children who travelled to New Zealand to make a better life. Many lived a life of hardship and died in exile. An Angel statue is the agent of Waihi’s in memoriam. A winged classically youthful figure

stands with arm outstretched in optimistic assurance that salvation is coming just over the next hill. On its base is inscribed the words “In Loving Memory”. So much youthful movement in the midst of a place so still seems to ridicule more than it reassures.

Davies’ Angel is an almost constant figure through the three print groups. It is placed in different positions and at different angles, and in Epitaph - For An Unknown Grave becomes the central figure in a triptych. These works contain dramatic double portraits of Davies

grungy protagonist. In these images petrified innocence stands ironically and uncomfortably between fallen man, between pictures of a punk who has descended to the bottom of the world. The landscape images for Epitaph - For An Unknown Grave come from the Auckland domain. In the

Alfred Chapman watercolour. Collection of Hawke’s Bay Cultural Trust– Hawke’s Bay Museum, Napier.4

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midst of traffic jams, fumes, bustling crowds and concrete, exists nature - a refuge, an oasis. But is it? Here is where a homeless woman was beaten to death, here is where a sad journey ended tragically.

In his work Davies uses high-keyed colour to effect dramatic and captivating contrasts. Though Waihi–In Memory Of are more earth coloured and muted than Davies’ earlier God’s Country series, images in Journey Through Takapau Plains, and Epitaph–For An Unknown Grave contain vivid areas of pure red, lime green, orange, yellow and blue banded to contrast and play one colour against another. Through all the prints there is a strong sense of texture, the texture of wood-grain, of vegetation and of five o’ clock shadow. Davies’ prints contain three thin lines which horizontally chart a graph, a range of hills, a heart beat - jagged and jumping they trace their way through each image. As the viewer moves from one work to another, there is a sense that each is an episode in a journey, related yet in their own right autonomous. These print groups may well be how Davies would describe his journey through the Valley of the shadow of Death, but we are aware of their fabrication, of their dream-like quality. Davies plays a part, his Angel plays a part and so does the landscape but, in the end, are they all not just projections of the artist’s mind?

1 John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965, p. 99

2 Quoted in Briar Gordon and Peter Stupples’, Charles Heaphy. Wellington: Pitman Publishing N. Z. Ltd., 1987, n. p.

3 Anne Kirker, New Zealand Women Artists. Auckland: Reed Methuen, 1993, p 17.

4 Alfred Chapman Diaries, Hawke’s Bay Cultural Trust Archives.

5 ibid.

6 Letter from Leslie Greener to Rhona Haszard, 11 September 1925. Archives of Te Papa Tongarewa

7 Letter from Leslie Greener to Rhona Haszard, 14 September 1925. Archives of Te Papa Tongarewa.

8 Art Notes: Wellington. Art in New Zealand, June 1929, Vol. 1, No. IV, p. 271.

Alfred Chapman sketch. Collection of Hawke’s Bay Cultural Trust– Hawke’s Bay Museum, Napier.

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(RE)MAkING THE NEW ZEALAND LANDScAPE

Edward Hanfling

hree series of prints by Anthony Davies: Journey Through the Takapau Plains (2000, mixed media: relief, collage and silkscreen), Waihi–In Memory Of (2001, relief and silkscreen), Epitaph–For an Unknown Grave (2001, relief and silkscreen). All of the images in these series include a configuration of these basic elements: a rectangular landscape or forest scene, a human figure (an altered self portrait, or two in the case of the Epitaph series), a cemetery statue (generally an angel and/or cross) and a wood-patterned ground upon which the former elements are disposed. The following narrative consists of a succession of thoughts, presented as they might occur in the mind of the spectator. It’s an exploration, not an explanation. It’s not an argument–it offers no declamatory conclusion–

..it barely even has an introduction. These three print series refer to previous works by the artist, exhibited under the title God’s Country.1 They resemble those works in that they consist of assembled vignettes. Sometimes these are arranged as separate pictorial units. Sometimes they overlap or are superimposed. For the viewer, it is a process of conceptually connecting these visual items. The result–an overall picture of the New Zealand countryside that does not live up to what many people would like to see there: ‘What! No snow-covered mountains, no frolicking lambs?’ A picture of death and decay; the God’s Country prints included car crashes, graveyards, tree stumps and rotting sheds. There are subtle differences between these works and Davies’ new series–

..the placement of the images seems more consistent–there’s a more ordered or orderly feel. The most significant difference, however, is the now dominant human presence. This inclusion of the artist within the work leads me to consider the notion of ‘expression’. I resume now where I have elsewhere left off and where I have posed a question without committing myself to an answer:

... perhaps the artist–Anthony Davies–has a hand in directing, or impacting upon, our responses. As an artist engaged in such troubling social issues, surely he must hope to at least influence–if not alter–attitudes and perceptions. Is he really so detached? We may wish to consider the role of the artist in the construction of meaning. 2

Davies has a reputation as an ‘expressionist’ printmaker. His prints prior to settling in New Zealand tended to be powerful responses to social conflict in England and Northern Ireland. Davies himself traces his formal language back to such artists as Otto Dix. There are differing opinions with regard to the perceived presence of Davies as an emotional, authorial presence within the works. The question remains: to what extent does he inject his own feelings into his art? Declan McGonagle states: ‘Never one to remain the distanced observer, the underlying strength of Davies’ work comes from his sometimes painful participation in life.’3 Guy Burn sees it differently: ‘He is no moralist like Hogarth or George Grosz but he sees himself as standing apart and observing. So he takes no sides’.4 Joanne Drayton takes her cue from the latter:

While in Northern Ireland, Davies ... operated as spectator, artistic outsider and commentator. The very position of being an alien and standing back detached from the action has the potential to clarify and crystallise vision. ... His print series takes no sides, offers no ‘goodies and baddies’, just a yawning sense of futility and loss at Northern Ireland’s shattered lives and bodies.

It is from a similar position of objective ‘otherness’ that Davies approaches his New Zealand subject matter.5

T

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If we are to clarify this issue it would seem propitious to consider how a work of visual art (be it print or painting) may be ‘expressive’–or how it comes to be considered as such. Theories of expression have tended to rest on a distinction between surface and content–what we might call the ‘visible physical’ and the ‘invisible metaphysical’. The former acts as the means of transporting the latter from artist to spectator. Kandinsky explains it thus:

A work of art consists of two elements, the inner and the outer. The inner is the emotion in the soul of the artist; this emotion has the capacity to evoke a similar emotion in the observer.6

In essence this is the Modernist model of artistic expression. In recent times problems have been raised with this theory. An image has no content–is simply a surface–not transparent to the intentions of the artist–it cannot effectively mediate between the artist and the spectator. In light of Roland Barthes’ seminal essay, ‘The Death of the Author’, works of visual art are seen as ‘texts’, the meaning of which is to be sought from the ‘reader’ rather than the ‘author’.7 Artists have no control over the way their works are viewed or thought about. Postmodern theories have undermined the Modernist ‘depth model’ of expression–

Fredric Jameson affirms that ‘depth is replaced by surface, or by multiple surfaces (what is often called intertextuality)’.8 Davies’ images seem to fulfil the notion of intertextuality. Within a single print he presents a succession of distinct images–surface fragments. They cannot be grasped as a unified whole. There is nothing so singular and coherent as a narrative. The images can be related to each other in many different ways, creating a multiplicity of dialogical strands with innumerable permutations. The construction of Davies’ images is symptomatic of Postmodern theory–

..they seem to signify Postmodernity and are akin to other New Zealand artworks that are identifiably Postmodern in their orientation–Richard Killeen’s Cut-Outs, for instance, or Ian Scott’s Floating Rectangles. There surely cannot be a Postmodern style–it must be impossible to do Postmodern art since, theoretically, Postmodernism repudiates all hierarchies. However, there are artists who have absorbed Postmodern ideas and allowed those ideas to inform the construction of their works. The dispersal of separate images to create a non-hierarchical composition serves as a visual symbol or equivalent for the contention that there can be no one ‘correct’ interpretation or singular narrative. Yet these artists have personal interests and preoccupations, which are reflected in their works. Images are neither randomly selected, nor arbitrarily positioned. There is not an extreme openness; it is not merely a ‘free play’ of meaning. Scott and Davies share (in addition to their medium, the silkscreen print) an underlying agenda–they question the customary image of New Zealand. 9 Scott parades cliché images of ‘New Zealandness’.10 Davies adopts an antithetical strategy-he reveals the backblocks (I almost said ‘the backside’) of New Zealand–banal and run-down rural remnants. For instance, the placement of square silkscreen-printed images of native trees and ferns at the top left or right of Davies’ Waihi series recalls similar images in works such as Scott’s New Zealand Winter (1993), but Davies’ tracts of bush tend to be partially cleared or decimated. They lack the verdancy of Scott’s.11 Davies’ use of colour is less descriptive in this instance–more symbolic–

..although both artists use colours that seem loaded with certain feelings or meanings; they’re bright–sharp-disjunctive. Davies’ colours are especially harsh–almost ‘over-ripe’ or garish–deliberate dissonances–they’re unsettling–that is, they don’t allow the spectator to settle for an ‘easy’ perception of the images.12 Davies exploits the emotional resonances of colours, the ‘natural’ associations that certain hues have for people–as E.H. Gombrich insists: ‘There is such a thing as a gay melody and a cheerful colour ... There is some inborn disposition in all of us to equate certain sensations with certain feeling tones.’13 Certainly people may have differing emotional reactions. But it seems fair to say that most people, when confronted with such jarring colouristic

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combinations, would find it hard to maintain an ‘all’s well with the world’ air of carefree indifference. The artist encourages viewers to become involved–

..I maintain that Davies himself disrupts that Postmodern attitude of authorial indifference. He states: ‘I impose my own narrative on what I have read or watched.’14 This is particularly evident in his recent series, with the insertion of flagrant personal references. Consider the titles: Waihi–In Memory Of. Journey Through the Takapau Plains. Whose memory? Whose journey? Davies, of course–the artist. That’s indicated by his visible presence in the works themselves.15 To a large extent, the prints are of photographs taken by the artist on excursions, many of which were around Hawke’s Bay country areas:

I have taken hundreds of photographs on my travels through the North Island. As I do not drive I travel through the countryside hermetically sealed in a bus or car–in a reverie, thinking of a James Belich depiction of New Zealand, an island of virgin forests, an immigrant settler population working the land. The reality is the remnants of a dying age–depopulation of the rural environment–decaying buildings and the residue of human travel.16

Remnants of colonial New Zealand also find their way into the work in the form of scenes taken from, or influenced by, sketches in the diaries compiled by an English settler in Hawke’s Bay–one

Alfred Chapman.17 An Alfred Chapman-like character is bound up in the self-image projected by Davies in his prints–

..a self-image that is theatrical. The problematic issue of whether a person’s ‘true nature’ can be revealed by their two-dimensional image is evaded; Davies is present only as an actor–role-playing. He has said that his role here is that of a rebel–an outsider.18 In fact it is an amalgam of character types. As an Englishman who emigrated to New Zealand at the end of the 20th century, Davies identifies with the 19th century colonial settler–the isolated bushman. The black singlet he wears in some of the images implies the iconic, rural man of the land. But the sports logo on the

singlet, along with the tattoos, earrings and cigarettes, suggest a contemporary emotional equivalent of the rural loner–the young, urban rebel. Included in here

somewhere must surely be that perennial rebel and outsider–the artist. In fact there is a parallel between Davies’ prints and those of another artist–

..the paintings of Dick Frizzell. Frizzell started painting landscapes in 1987, by which time he had built a reputation as an irreverent, ‘avant-garde’ artist. Like Davies, he has tended to favour the Hawke’s Bay region, using his own photographs as the basis for his paintings.19 In painting the landscape he also seems to have adopted a similar, outsider attitude to that acted out by Davies, and when his landscapes were initially exhibited he rapidly became an outsider with regard to the ‘artworld’–to paint landscapes was to be reactionary. Retrospectively, the deliberate ‘clunkiness’ of those early landscapes has come to be seen as imbued with a sense of irony–a Postmodern

Alfred Chapman watercolour. Collection of Hawke’s Bay Cultural Trust– Hawke’s Bay Museum, Napier.5

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subversion of the landscape genre. However, Frizzell’s own comments give a different picture:

I think it all comes down to a question of priority–or primacy–what was my main motivation?! And I think it was primarily a direct emotive/aesthetic thing. A romance essentially.

I really did feel like a sort of Thomas Hart Benton outlaw/outsider–a grumpy Crump driving around the backblocks of NZ w[ith] ... my camera–staying in strange Motels in places like Taumaranui–climbing through forests at sunrise–feeling a profound Kiwi melancholy watching the sun come up over the dark wet hills, etc., etc.20

It is significant, then, that included in some of Davies’ 1998 prints are scenes derived from Frizzell landscapes. Davies reworks the landscapes (such as Frizzell’s Tarawera Rest Stop, 1989, and Whakapirau, 1990) into freely executed drawings. Interestingly, Davies seems to have adopted this technique after seeing, and appropriating, a painting by Ian Scott–Mapua (1988). This work is itself an appropriation–or representation–of a 1939 drawing by Colin McCahon. That drawing, in turn, made reference to another important New Zealand artist, Toss Woollaston, whose house is depicted in the bottom right corner. The house is a potent symbol of the artist as an isolated outsider. For the majority of his artistic career Woollaston received little recognition, living in poverty in the Nelson countryside in the humble cottage that he built himself from the clay of the region. Woollaston’s paintings were an emotional response to the New Zealand landscape–emptied of people–applying vigorous brushstrokes in earthy tones. McCahon also identified with rural New Zealand, seeking there the ‘essence’ of the land and the identity of its people. McCahon it was who spoke of New Zealand as ‘a landscape with too few lovers’.21 Davies’ prints similarly capture that latent ‘hardness’–a certain grimness that underpins rural New Zealand. The rural working man–‘Man Alone’–appears in McCahon’s painting The Promised Land (1948), a character type emblematised by the ubiquitous black singlet and played out by Davies in his prints.22 Further, Davies’ cemetery angel-figures could almost be read as an irreverent poke at McCahon’s depictions of angels in the New Zealand landscape and his solemn declaration: ‘I saw an angel in this land. Angels can herald beginnings.’23 Davies’ prints, then, can be seen to generate a rich iconographical interplay–

..a complex network of references to the construction of the New Zealand landscape by a succession of artists. If Davies’ landscape scenes derive, in part, from the colonial images of Alfred Chapman, his figures, positioned in relation to those landscapes, also have 19th century precedents. Depictions of the New Zealand landscape by colonial artists such as Augustus Earle, typically featured a spectator figure situated in the foreground, back to the viewer, overseeing the landscape. Most often that figure is the artist. On a simple level it testifies to the artist’s personal observation of the depicted scene–it is proof of that. Davies depicts himself so that we may be sure that he has

Alfred Chapman sketch. Collection of Hawke’s Bay Cultural Trust– Hawke’s Bay Museum, Napier.

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witnessed that which he depicts. But can this man we see be trusted? He looks to be a dubious character–suspicious–untrustworthy! After all, we know that the image does not exist as it is shown–that it is a confluence of distinct fragments–cobbled together–not a coherent, verifiable visual document of an actual location. It cannot be guaranteed. Thus Francis Pound has suggested that, while the spectator figure is a sign of veracity, it simultaneously stands for the construction of the image, for the fact that the image is fundamentally an artistic reality, not a window onto reality:

On the level of depictivity, the artist figure acknowledges that what we see is a work of art–a representation made by the human hand; again, but in a different sense, it is asserted, ‘The artist was here.’ The picture, then, signifies its own making.24

Davies as spectator figure stands for the idea that what is in the image (the subject, the scene) is concomitant with the artist’s act of representing it. Moreover, each affects the other. The process of representing the subject is one of transformation–‘making it over’ (again)–but at the same time the artist is drawn in, so to speak, to the scene.25 This situation is further complicated by the presence of each new spectator to the artwork. Although, as we have noted, there may be continuities between the perceptions of different people (with regard to the emotional resonances of colour, for example) it must nonetheless be the case that each person’s perception will be, however slightly or subtly, different. In effect, the artwork is ‘re-made’ each time it is viewed, in the same way that the depicted scene was initially ‘made’ by the artist. The question then arises as to the extent to which spectators are ‘directed’ by the artist–

..how much of the ‘making’ of the work is done by the artist and how much by the spectator? If we cannot answer this question definitively we can at least say that, in comparison to Davies’ earlier New Zealand print series, these prints offer the viewer more. It is the inclusion of human figures that is significant in this respect; emotion obviously cannot exist independently of people. In a sense, Davies here represents emotion. In the earlier God’s Country prints, people were absent. Or perhaps it should be said that they were an ‘absent presence’. That is, there were manifestations of human presence in the form of buildings, cemeteries, cultivated land and the like, but people were not depicted–they were not there ‘in the flesh’. This ‘absent presence’ could also be seen as a feature of the Kaimanawa Horses series (2000). Those prints were of horses, but fundamentally they were about people–about the social agendas and conflicts that resulted in the death of the horses

depicted in the prints, and about the emotions and beliefs of spectators contemplating them. Further, the images could not be easily grasped at a casual glance. The emotional impact was increased in that the viewer was made to work at ‘reading’, and effectively ‘making’, the works. It was a more ‘hands off’ approach on the part of the artist. To some extent Davies’ own viewpoint was apparent in the construction of the images–perhaps even in the choice of the issue itself. However, there was scope for different viewpoints. Viewers were compelled to intensely scrutinise their own response– their own emotions. At the same time it is possible that the works were limited in their ability to effect, impact on, or

Alfred Chapman watercolour. Collection of Hawke’s Bay Cultural Trust– Hawke’s Bay Museum, Napier.6

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substantially alter people’s preconceived views. In Davies’ recent series, on the other hand, the gestures and expressions acted out by the spectator figures in the images may serve to key the viewer in to certain emotional responses–

..viewers will inevitably empathise–try and connect themselves emotionally to the figures–‘get inside them’. The unsophisticated stage-acting seems to beg the viewer to mimic the gestures, playing on our inclination to be influenced by, and modify our body-language to, the actions of people around us. There’s a basic humanism involved. Some of the depicted gestures are explicit in terms of their expressive meaning–head sunk in hands, for example–a conventional symbol of sadness or melancholy. An intense downcast gaze could indicate despair–perhaps even silent anger. Other poses and expressions are more ambiguous–staring out into space–sometimes turning to gaze towards the framed landscape–or staring out of the work altogether–contemplative. In two of the Waihi prints, and the first of the Takapau series, the figure turns his back on the viewer–hunched shoulders–‘turning a cold shoulder’–almost aggressively. The process of lighting a cigarette occurs frequently throughout the three series. This differs from the other gestures in that it has the effect of distancing the figure from the landscape scene within the image, cancelling out any emotional connection to that scene. His attitude becomes careless, disregarding, detached, almost nonchalant. Davies’ figures exhibit a range of theatrical actions–

..they’re different in this respect from the spectator figures that featured in 19th century landscapes. Francis Pound remarks on the stillness of the artist-spectator in Augustus Earle’s Distant View of the Bay of Islands, New Zealand (c1827-28). According to Pound, that stillness is indicative of the aesthetic attitude–the approved manner of contemplating nature.26 Davies’ figures contemplate issues more pressing and less refined–beyond the realm of the aesthetic–they’re active–restless– coarse–emotional–angst-ridden. Could it be, however, that in depicting what is presented as his own expressive gaze or response, Davies sets it as a remove–objectifies it–projects it ‘out there’, to be viewed as a picture or surface, emptied of meaning or an emotional ‘core’? Here’s another possibility–perhaps it is not that the artist-spectator figure requires us to empathise with it–maybe these figures are aping us! Seen this way the emotional tone of the works is altered entirely. Now there is a cruelly ironic and disturbing, burlesque quality, rather than a grave poignancy. There is the potential, then, for a sudden switch of mood. We are still maintaining the premise here that the spectator figures are, ultimately, Davies himself–

..must they necessarily be seen as such? Many viewers will be unaware of the artist’s appearance –they’ll not have the necessary data to make the connection. Even viewers who are ‘in the know’ may choose to see the figures differently. They can follow Davies’ shape-shifting act and the various guises he adopts. They may also be aware of a further connotation of the spectator figure–that it stands for themselves, the spectator of the artwork. Davies’ prints do much to suggest this interpretation. There is no illusion of a coherent pictorial space. Images are dispersed so as not to relate to each other spatially or proportionally. The surface is unified by an all-over wood texture. Colours are non-naturalistic, forming abstract patterns that are largely independent of representational forms.27 Accordingly, the prints cannot be taken for windows onto a world beyond that of the space in which they are located–the spectator’s space. Davies demonstrates that a work of visual art is more akin to a mirror than to a window. It is a flat, opaque surface which cannot be seen through, but which seems to reflect back that which is in front of it–namely us, the spectators. We have a heightened sense of our own ‘now’. We see the reflection of ourselves. We look at ourselves looking. That process of seeing is an inescapably cognitive activity–an operation of the brain as much as of the eyes–a conceptual activity–we listen to ourselves looking–

..what is seen in the work is determined by the knowledge and experience, the psychological and social constitution, of the individual. Davies’ spectator figures emblematise our propensity to see

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ourselves in the work–the way we make the work in our own image. We provide the emotional ‘content’. It is re-presented by the spectator figures in the work–re-presented, that is, for our own consumption. Consequently it may be said that we are enabled to get outside ourselves–to study ourselves from a detached position–to examine and analyse our emotions and beliefs.28 There is something of us in those figures–and Anthony Davies is in there too. Audience and artist cooperate to ‘make’ the artwork–including the succession of shifting identities that the spectator figures in the work may be seen to assume–

..artist, spectator, urban rebel, rural outsider, colonial settler, man alone and various other roles or inflections that may be attributed. Images that have shifting identities, meanings and emotions are

characteristic of Davies’ printmaking throughout his career. It is to do with the formal construction of the prints–a singular clear vision is denied. Consider the following observations regarding Davies’ Urban Portraits of 1984:

In this graphic world there is no real hierarchy of lines, any more than there is an order of objects. Anything can be joined to anything else. Streets become walls, night becomes day and the living sphinx grows out of the turret of a tank; we are not at all surprised to find a man crucified upon a telegraph pole, or to find a vanitas in the scrap yard. And this fantasia is the product of a needle upon metal.29

The configuration of lines tends to be susceptible to more than one reading. One reality merges into another. Conversing with Davies himself is rather like this–his speech is a seamless succession of separate ideas and issues, each leading to the next until he ends up in a conceptual location distant from that where he started. The same is true of Davies as represented in his prints. But is it Davies who is represented there? Certainly those figures derive from photographs of the artist–they bear his image, carry his features. But they have additional features–specifically the vermicular tattoos–that are not shared by Davies in the actual world. Like the character identities formerly outlined, the tattoos are overlaid, forming part of a two-dimensional facade that may influence viewers. They modify their estimation of this person on the basis of his appearance. One is reminded of that well-worn phrase: ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover.’ What is revealed here is the

Alfred Chapman watercolour. Collection of Hawke’s Bay Cultural Trust– Hawke’s Bay Museum, Napier.7

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Top: Waihi–In Memory Of–4 Below: Waihi In–Memory Of–5

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Waihi In–Memory Of–6

persuasiveness of the surface–Davies’ flat printed images–

..images that assume multiple realities or identities. Crosses are a potent symbol in many of his works: in the God’s Country prints there is a frequent juxtaposition of small white roadside crosses (denoting the location of car crash fatalities) and cumbrous stone cemetery crosses and statuary. The latter reappear in his recent prints. In two prints from the Kaimanawa Horses series fences seem to metamorphose into rows of crosses. Also, in that series, many of the images–especially those of horse corpses–are barely decipherable; the horses, in death, appear to merge with the earth– perhaps to fertilise the soil–generate new life and growth (possibly tussock grass). The life/death duality–the co-existence, or cycle, of life and death–continues into the present series, where living figures are paired (at lower left and right of the composition) with marmoreal memorials–the inanimate graveyard statues. The New Zealand landscape is also infused with this life/death duality. In the Epitaph and Waihi prints, New Zealand bush is portrayed in varying states of health. In the Takapau series, prominent, centrally placed trees exist alongside tree stumps and what appear to be pine plantations. This cycle of decay and regeneration, ephemerality and mortality is conveyed also through more abstract means–colours that range from the verdant to the sickly–

..colours that betray New Zealand’s ‘clean and green’ image. The conflicted nature of conservation in New Zealand is another theme from the Kaimanawa Horses series that continues in these works. Davies highlights the uneasy relationship in this country between conservation and farming (both of which are essential to the economy, the image of environmental salubrity being a key factor in luring tourists). With the onset of colonisation in the 19th century, vast tracts of native bush were cleared to make the land productive. As recently as 1999 steps had to be taken by the government to curb the logging of South Island West Coast forests. The felling of native bush is re-enacted in the Epitaph and Waihi prints. The Takapau series displays subsequent patterns of land use. There are hills

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cleared of bush. Patches of scrub and the occasional tree stump remain. The presence of farming and the means of transporting farm produce are indicated by symbols, generally in the form of road signs. One sign presents the silhouette of a cow, another shows a railway engine, there is one for a railway crossing and one that carries the warning ‘milk tanker turns’. The conservation/farming duality is also, so to speak, a matter of life and death–

..the death of animals provides for the welfare of people–in the bank and in the stomach. New Zealand relies on animals dying on a regular basis. Those who come from overseas are more inclined to draw attention to this–as Davies has done, and as J.B. Priestley did when he visited in the early 1970s. Priestley noted that the suffering of animals was in contradiction to New Zealand’s humane stance and image:

Nobody must imagine ... that the country’s rural community exists in a twentieth-century Arcadia. The men who swarm into the pubs near the big sheep stations, men who treat one another not to pints but great jugs of beer, would have no place in a charming pastoral. When they have to be responsible for thousands of sheep, men are not likely to be so many ‘gentle shepherds’. They are not deliberately cruel but they can easily become shockingly callous, seeing living creatures in their care as so much merchandise.30

Davies’ prints similarly capture and expose the hardness and violence of rural New Zealand. It is an attitude that extends to flora as well as fauna–

..the felling of forests as an industry in itself is also evident in Davies’ works. Wood is a primary building material in New Zealand, in terms of houses, fencing and numerous other manufactured products. Wood is present in Davies’ prints as a raw resource but it is also, in part, the source of the prints themselves; the woodblock contributes to the construction of the printed image, and its trace lingers on as a formal or decorative feature–the grainy, patterned ground on which other images are dispersed. The represented figures–with cap and black singlet–stand for the labour not only of the tree-feller but also of the artist. A further variable can be added to these shifting identities–

..that of time. It important to consider the individual prints as parts of series, rather than as isolated entities. This enhances the effect of a succession of moments. The actions of the figures can be read in sequence, like stills from a film. Linkages can be established that produce a number of interweaving narrative strands. Colour too has a role to play in evoking subtly varied moods and the passage of time. This is particularly evident in the Waihi series where the colour evolves from fiery orange to sulphurous yellow. However, time does not always run smoothly and inevitably forward in Davies’ prints. We have seen that both the figures and the landscape incorporate 19th century, as well as contemporary, realities. Further, in combining separate pictorial units Davies suggests a series of different moments in time. Logically, the images cannot exist concurrently. The works are about layers of reality. There is a built-up or relief component to the works–images are physically overlaid. The past lingers as a trace. Temporal discontinuities are also emblematised by the inclusion of two figures within a single image, which occurs in the Epitaph series–

..the two artist-spectators are placed opposite each other at the lower left and right corners. An effect of oscillation between the two figures is created. What is the point of this impossible co-existence? There are surely more than compositional considerations involved. It may be a means of heightening the emotional resonance of the work–providing more than one perspective–multiple viewpoints–introducing greater variation–increased intensity. It might also allow a difference of expression between the two figures–a contrast–disagreement or conflict even. Or perhaps it charts the evolution of the emotions of one person. The effect is different for different images. Sometimes the figures seem detached from each other; they are oblivious, self-absorbed and independent.

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At other times they appear to engage each other’s attention, or at least face each other rather than looking in opposite directions. This might come across as a kind of conversation–a back-and-forth dialogue witnessed by the spectator outside the work. Perhaps the overriding significance of these

two figures is in their articulation of the life/death duality–the notion of transience and mutability. In each image, one of the two figures appears less distinct than the other–his form is hazier, less sharp. This is surely a ghostly presence from the 19th century. It is to be observed that the cemetery statue is situated between the two figures. The statue pierces the rectangular forest image from below. The ravaged bush straddles both halves of the print as if to suggest that little has changed between the 19th century and the present in terms of the conservation, or otherwise, of New Zealand’s natural attributes. Here there’s a bifurcation of the temporal disparities bound up in the single spectator figures of the other prints. Davies creates an

unsettling sense of transience and mutability–

..there is nothing stable about his prints. Their formal features encourage an active viewing experience involving shifting identities or realities–teasing out narratives, connotations and emotions. The prints require time from the spectator just as much as they are about time. It is a questioning of our ability to say immediately and unequivocally what something is. In the end we may not have a definitive answer–but then I stated as much at the beginning. And yet a picture with shape and substance unfolds in the mind–through mutually affective transactions between artist and spectator a consistent expressive tone is established–built up, and built upon, as one explores further. There is no conclusion here because each step of that exploration is an interpretive moment that has the making of another–and yet, in the words of Stanley Fish, ‘because it has been a part of our experience, it means.’31

1 Portfolio Gallery, Auckland, 2000

2 Edward Hanfling, Behind the Image, in Anthony Davies, Kaimanawa Horses, Auckland: Lopdell House

Gallery, 2001, n.p.

3 Declan McGonagle, in A Tale of Two Cities, Derry: The Orchard Gallery, 1991, n.p.

4 Guy Burn, The Comedy of Life, in A Tale of Two Cities, ibid.

5 Joanne Drayton, From Vanity Fair to Eden? (via the Takapau Plains), in Anthony Davies, Journey Through the Takapau Plains, Wanganui: Quay School of the Arts Gallery, 2000, n.p.

6 Wassily Kandinsky, quoted in Vincent Tomas,Kandinsky’s Theory of Painting, British Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 9, 1969, p. 20.

7 Roland Barthes, The Death of the Author, in David Lodge (ed.), Modern Criticism and Theory, London & New York: Longman, pp. 167-172.

Alfred Chapman sketch. Collection of Hawke’s Bay Cultural Trust– Hawke’s Bay Museum, Napier.

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8 Fredric Jameson, The Deconstruction of Expression, (1984), in Charles Harrison & Paul Wood, Art in Theory 1900-1990: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, Oxford: Blackwell, 1995, p. 1078.

9 Ian Scott’s stated intentions with regard to his Painters series (his works from the late 1980s that came preceded the Floating Rectangles series) seem equally applicable to the 1990s works: “I ... wanted to make a post-modern work that was not an arbitrary appropriation but was relevant in a strictly New Zealand context.” (Ian Scott, quoted in Warwick Brown, Ian Scott Paintings 1986-1989, Hamilton: Centre for Contemporary Art, 1993, p. 18.) Scott also asserts that he wanted “to deal with the big issues in painting and human life, to say something which is an absolute and not just to make saleable gallery art to be used for decorative purposes.” (Ibid, p. 24.)

10 Scott’s 1990 works include images of rugby, sunbathing on the beach, sheep-farming, marching girls, pristine mountain scenery and native bush.

11 However, it is worth noting that, in Scott’s New Zealand Winter, the native bush image is paired with one of a beer can, and in his Weather Painter (1990) there’s a beer can actually ‘in’ amongst the ferns, picked out in gleaming red as if by the beam of a flashlight. Here, like Davies, Scott highlights something that is at odds with New Zealand’s ‘clean and green’ image–something hidden or glossed over.

12 Abrasive colour effects are also apparent in some of Davies’ earlier, pre-New Zealand print series, such as the Self Portraits (1982-83) and The Great Divide (1987-88).

13 E.H. Gombrich, Expression and Communication, (1962), in Francis Frascina & Charles Harrison, Modern Art and Modernism: A Critical Anthology, New York: Harper & Row, 1982, p. 178.

14 Anthony Davies, quoted in Joanne Drayton, op. cit.

15 Again, there is a link here to Ian Scott’s 1990s works, which include such titles as Memory of a Night in Haast (1990), and occasionally include a printed photo of Scott himself, as in New Zealand Sunset (1990).

16 Anthony Davies, quoted in Joanne Drayton, op. cit.

17 These are to be found, as Davies found them, at the Hawkes Bay Museum in Napier.

18 Anthony Davies, Conversation with the author, 18 April, 2001.

19 An exhibition of recent Frizzell landscapes, at Auckland’s Gow Langsford Gallery November-December 2000, was called Welcome to Sunny Hawkes Bay.

20 Dick Frizzell, Letter to the author, 5 May, 2000.

21 The words are inscribed on his Northland Panels of 1958.

22 Among Ian Scott’s Painters works is a re-presentation of McCahon’s Promised Land, entitled New Zealand Painting (1987).

23 Colin McCahon, Beginnings, Landfall, Vol. 20 No. 4, December 1966, p. 363.

24 Francis Pound, Spectator Figures in Some New Zealand Paintings and Prints, Art New Zealand, No. 23, Autumn 1982, p. 44.

25 “... what is depicted is the depicting. Here, the act of depiction modifies what is depicted: equally, what is depicted modifies the act of depiction.” (Pound, ibid.)

26 Pound, op. cit., p. 40.k

27 An exception is the suggestion of blue sky in the Takapau and Epitaph series. There are also irregular lines that suggest the shape of the landscape, but these run horizontally across the prints and through the other images at several different levels. Thus, like the wood texture, they unify the surface rather than creating a sense of space.

28 Francis Pound has also considered this role of the spectator figure: “It represents the displaced glance of the picture’s real spectator: it is the spectator’s painted deputy. By it, it is the act of our seeing that we see. Plausibly posed as a bystander or onlooker to the depicted scene, it yet flagrantly represents us–like it, observers of a scene from which, spatially, we see and must remain implacably separate.” (Pound, ibid, p. 41.)

29 David Brett, Concerning Two Cities, in A Tale of Two Cities, op. cit.

30 J.B. Priestley, A Visit to New Zealand, London: Heinemann, 1974, pp. 142-143.

31 Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities, Cambridge, Massachusetts & London, England: Harvard University Press, 1980, p. 154.

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List of Works

Journey Through The Takapau Plains 2000 No. 1–4 Image size 76 x 56 cm Paper size 92.5 x 74 cm Mixed media print–relief, collage and silkscreen Printed on Fabriano Designo smooth, 300gm, handmade paper

Journey Through The Takapau Plains 2000 No. 5–6 Image size 70 x 100 cm Paper size 78 x 101cm Mixed media print–relief, collage and silkscreen Printed on Fabriano Designo smooth, 300gm, handmade paper

Waihi– In Memory of 2001 No. 1–6 Image size 76 x 56 cm Paper size 87 x 59 cm Mixed media print–relief, collage and silkscreen Printed on Moulin du Gue, 270gm, handmade paper

Epitaph; For an Unknown Grave 2001 No. 7–9 Image size 76 x 100 cm Paper size 78 x 107 cm Mixed media print–relief, and silkscreen Printed on Fabriano Designo smooth, 300gm, handmade paper

Self Portrait–Out of Eden 2001 No. 1–8 Image size 56.5 x 41.5 cm Paper size 70 x 50.5 cm Mono print, relief and silkscreen Printed on Incisioni, 310gm, handmade paper

Winged Angels (A –W) 2001 No. 1-8 Image size 41.5 x 46 cm Paper size 70 x 50.5 cm Mono print, relief and silkscreen Printed on Incisioni, 310gm, handmade paper

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ANTHONY DAVIES R.E.

1947 Born Andover, Hampshire, England

1966 – 70 Winchester School of Art, Diploma of Art and Design

1970 – 73 Royal College of Art, London, MA (RCA)

1973 – 75 Prix de Rome, British School of Rome

1978 Set up Print Workshop at Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, South Wales

1977 – 80 Part–time Lecturer Winchester School of Art

1981 – 83 Part–time Lecturer Gwent Faculty of Higher Education, South Wales

1980 – 88 Member of ‘56 Group Wales’

1983 Lecturer, Ulster Polytechnic, Belfast

1984 – 85 Lecturer, University of Ulster, Belfast

1985 Set up own Print Workshop, Belfast

1986 Printmaking Fellowship, Royal College of Art, London

1987 Course Director U.C.L.A/R.C.A. Summer School, London

1988/89 Residency Foyle Arts Centre, Derry, Northern Ireland

1990 Artist in Residence – 11th British International Print Biennale, Bradford

1990/91 John Brinkley Fellowship – Norfolk Institute of Art & Design, Norwich, England

1993 Co–set Designer, ‘Peace Child International’, ‘Playhouse’, Derry, Northern Ireland

1994 Invited Artist, Columbus College, Columbus, Georgia, U.S.A.

1994 Elected R.E. Fellow of the Royal Society of Painters, Printmakers, England

1994 Openshaw Printmaking Residency, Lowick House, Cumbria, England

1994 Visiting Senior Lecturer/Artist, Elam School of Fine Art, University of Auckland, New Zealand

1995 Visiting Professor, Department of Art, Florida State University, Tallahassee,

Florida, U.S.A.

1996/99 Artist in Residence, Wanganui Polytechnic, New Zealand

1996–2000 Printmaking Tutor/Technician, UNITEC Polytechnic, Auckland, New Zealand

1996 Visiting Artist, Ilam School of Fine Arts, University of Canterbury, New Zealand

1996–2000 Visiting Artist EIT, Hawkes Bay Polytechnic, New Zealand

1996/97 Tutor, Waikato Summer School of the Arts, Hamilton, New Zealand

1997 Print Workshop – Hawke’s Bay Exhibition Centre, Hastings, New Zealand

1997 Print Workshop – Diocesan School, Auckland, New Zealand

2000 Artist in Residence, Heretaunga Intermediate School, Hastings, New Zealand

2000/01 Printmaking Tutor, Artstation, Auckland, New Zealand

2000/01 Visiting Tutor, A.U.T. Auckland, New Zealand

2001 Co–organiser, ‘Printmaking Forum–New Zealand 2001’

2001 Multi–Media Workshop–UNITEC Polytechnic, Auckland, New Zealand

2001 Multi–Media Workshop–Lopdell House Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand

2001–current Part–Time Printmaking Tutor, Unitec Polytechnic, Auckland, New Zealand

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ONE MAN EXHIBITIONS1975 Winchester School of Art Gallery

1980 1978 – 1980, City of Birmingham Polytechnic

1981 Midland Arts Centre, Birmingham

1982 Moira Kelly Fine Art, London

Oriel Gallery, Cardiff

Ferens Art Gallery, Kingston Upon Hull

1983 Octagon Gallery, Belfast

The Minories, Colchester

Peter Grimes, Midlands Arts Centre Birmingham

Compass Gallery, Glasgow

1984 Oxford Gallery

Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool

Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth

1985 Edinburgh Printworkshop Gallery

Arts Council Gallery, Belfast, Northern Ireland

Thumb Gallery, London

Andrew Knight Gallery, Cardiff

Bolton Museum and Art Gallery

1986 Aberystwyth Art Centre Gallery

Cleveland Gallery, Middlesbrough

Peacock Printmakers, Aberdeen

Lanchester Gallery, Coventry Polytechnic

1987 On–the–Wall Gallery, Belfast

Pentonville Gallery, London

Crawford Municipal Gallery, Cork, Eire

The Hendriks Gallery, Dublin, Eire

Garter Lane Art Centre, Waterford, Eire

Thumb Gallery, London

Limerick City Gallery of Art, Eire

1988 Gateshead Central Library

On–the–Wall Gallery, Belfast

Dean Clough Contemporary Art Gallery, Halifax

Thumb Gallery, London

Norske Grafikere, Oslo, Norway

Triskel Arts Centre, Cork, Eire

Darlington Arts Centre

1989 South African Association of Arts, Pretoria, South Africa

Dean Clough Contemporary Art Gallery, Halifax

Galerie Siegert, Basel, Switzerland

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Art Space Gallery, London

Octagon Gallery, Belfast

1990 Kerlin Gallery, Belfast

1991 Orchard Gallery, Derry, Northern Ireland

Plymouth Arts Centre

Drumcoon Arts Centre, Wigan

1992 Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich

Crescent Art Centre, Belfast

Manchester City Art Gallery

Maclaurin Art Gallery, Ayr

Leicester Museum and Art Gallery

1993 Seagate Gallery, Dundee

Wolverhampton Art Gallery

Project Arts Centre, Dublin

1994 Experimental Gallery, Columbus College, Georgia, U.S.A.

Belltable Arts Centre, Limerick, Eire

Wexford Arts Centre, Eire

1996 Drawings Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand,

Ilam School of Fine Art Gallery, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

1997 Salamander Gallery, Christchurch, New Zealand

1999 On the Road, Archill Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand

2000 God’s Country, Portfolio Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand

Journey Through the Takapau Plains, Quay School of the Arts Gallery, Wanganui, New Zealand

2001 Kaimanawa Horses, Lopdell House Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand

TWO MAN EXHIBITIONS1982 A Working Relationship, Daborn/Davies, South Hill Park Arts Centre, Bracknell

1983 A New Landscape in Bolton, Bolton Museum and Art Gallery

1984 After Images, Ainsworth/Davies, Ulster Polytechnic, Belfast, N.I.

Enclosed Worlds, Brewer/Davies, Newport Museum and Art Gallery

1985 Exploding Myths, Davies/Kindness, Orchard Gallery, Londonderry, N.I.

1989 Comedy of Life, Davies/Wilson, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, Eire

1991 Front–Line, Davies/Porrit, Norwich Gallery, Norfolk Institute of Art & Design

1992 Fish Out of Water, Davies/Lisle, Newlyn Art Gallery, Cornwall

2001 Crossing Boundaries, Vanessa Narbey/Anthony Davies, Artstation Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand

2001 Phillipa Blair/Anthony Davies, Portfolio Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand

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GROUP EXHIBITIONS1974 Present Impressions, Oxford Gallery, Oxford

1974 / 1975 Mostra, British School at Rome

1977 – 1979 Royal Academy Summer Shows, London

1979 Chapter Prints Exhibition, Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff

Pictures and Paintings, Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff

1980 Five New Members, 56 Group Wales, University College, Cardiff

Hull Print Competition, Ferens Art Gallery, Hull (Purchase Prizes)

Davies/Deacon and Kirkwood, Winchester School of Art Gallery

Work in Progress, Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff

1981 Small Works Exhibition, 56 Group Wales (Toured Scotland)

25th Anniversary Exhibition’, 56 Group Wales, National Museum of Wales, Cardiff

Final Proof Oriel, Oriel Gallery, Cardiff (Welsh Arts Council Touring Exhibition)

Art and the Sea, City of Southampton Art Gallery and I.C.A London

Cardiff Artists, Howard Gardens Gallery, Faculty of Art, Cardi

1982 Davies, Cullimore, Macfarland, St Pauls Gallery, Leeds

7th Internation Print Biennale, Bradford, England

56 Wales/Glasgow Group, Edinburgh Arts Centre

Artists Incorporated, St Paul’s Gallery, Leeds

Hull Print Competition, Ferens Art Gallery, Hull

Contemporary Art Society for Wales, Recent Purchases, Oriel Gallery, Cardiff

35 Artists Printmaking, Royal College of Art London (Touring)

1983 Drawn Together, Swansea University and Cardiff Faculty of Art, Howard Gardens Gallery, Cardiff

Fiftieth Birthday Choice, A tribute to Edward Lucie–Smith, Leinster Fine Art, London

London/New York, Downtown Cultural Centre, Brooklyn U.S.A.

Ljubijana Print Biennale, Yugoslavia

3rd Biennale of European Graphic Art, Baden Baden, Germany

House of Humour and Satire, Gabrovo, Bulgaria

56 Group Wales, Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Bologna, Italy

The Welsh Group Exhibition Wales 1983 (Touring Exhition)

1984 Graphic 84 Alfas Exhibition, New Delhi, India

British Artists Books since 1970, Atlantis Gallery, London (Touring)

8th International Print Biennale, Bradford, England (Prizewinner)

Listowel National Graphic Exhibition, Kerry, Eire (Major Prizewinner)

A Birthday Celebraton, – 56 Group Wales, Oriel Gallery, Cardiff

New Images of Printmaking, Blond Fine Art, London

10th Internation Print Biennale, Cracow, Poland

The International Print Exhibition, Intergrafia ‘84 in Katowice, Poland

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Lurking in Weeds, Huddersfield Art Gallery

Belfast Presencia Plastica, Museo Franciso Goitia, Zacatecas, Mexico

10th International Independante Exhibition of Prints, Kanagawa, Yokohama, Japan

1985 Printmakers at the R.C.A., Barbican Centre, London

Chapter Artists, Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff

Rockford International Biennale ‘85, Illinois, U.S.A.

Hanga Annual ‘85, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art, Japan

Listowel Fourth International Print Biennale, Kerry, Eire

Contemporary Northern Ireland Prints, Kornhaus Gallery, Weingarten, West Germany

Garbro Fria International Print Biennale Embrage, Brazil

1st International Print Biennale at Aunte Festival, Portugal

Life and Landscape, From Scotland and Wales, Glasgow

Group/56 Group Wales Exhibition, Newport Museum and Art Gallery

3rd Humberside Printmaking Competition, Ferens Art Gallery, Hull (Touring)

11th International Independante Exhibition of Prints, Kanagawa, Yokohama, Japan

1986 Contrasts, 9 Artists Working in Belfast, Waterman’s Art Centre, Brentford, London

Tradition and Innovation in Printmaking Today, Milton Keynes Exhibition Gallery (Touring)

9th International Print Biennale, Bradford, England (Prizewinner)

Built Up Areas, Warwickshire Museum (Arts Council Touring Exhibition)

A Sense of Ireland, Meridian Hotel, Singapore

Hanga Annual ’86, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art, Japan

Documentation – Polish/Irish Artists Mandela Centre Cracow – Poland

Printmaking 1970 – 1986, Rome Scholars in Printmaking, Chelsea School of Art Gallery, London

8th Norwegian International Print Biennale, Municipal Library in Fredrikstad, Norway

56 Group Wales, Mirbachou Palace, Bratislave, Czechoslovakia (Touring)

Fishguard Festival, 56 Group Wales

8th International Exhibition of Graphic Art, Frenchen, West Germany

Group Prints Show, Peacock Gallery, Craigavon, Norther Ireland (Touring)

Under the Cover of Darkness – Night Prints, Bristol City Art Gallery (Arts Council Touring Exhibition)

Direct Contact, 6 Cardiff Artists, Kunstlerhaus Stuttgart, West Germany

12th International Independante Exhibition of Prints, Kanagawa, Yokohama, Japan

1987 Direct Contact, 6 Cardiff Artists, Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff

The New Microcosm of London, Thumb Gallery, London

Athena Art Awards, Barbican Concourse Gallery, London

Belfast/Cardiff, Cardiff/Belfast, Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff

Documentation – Polish/Irish Artists, Poznan, Poland

First International Biennale of Prints, Campinas Sao Paulo, Brazil

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Top: Self Portrait–Out Of Eden 1 Below: Self Portrait– Out Of Eden 5

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Hang Annual ‘87, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art, Japan

50th Anniversary Exhibition, Contemporary Arts Society for Wales, National Museum of Wales (Touring)

Ljublijana Print Biennale, Yugoslavia

International Print Biennale, Varna, Bulgaria

Prints with a Point, 1987, Hard Times Gallery, Bristol (Touring)

8th International Biennale of Humour and Satire, Gabrou, Bulgaria

30 years on, 56 Group Wales, Worcester City Museum

Anniversary Exhibition of Printmaking from the Royal College of Art 1937 – 1987, Barbican Concourse Gallery, London

Belfast/Cardiff, Cardiff/Belfast, Arts Council Gallery, Belfast

Artists Choice – Royal College of Art, Victoria and Albert Museum (Touring)

A Line of Country, 3 Artists from Northern Ireland, Corner House Gallery, Manchester

Xylon 10, International Triennal Exhibition of Wood Engraving, Winterthur, Switzerland (Touring)

State of the Nation, Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry

Claremorris Open Exhibition, Claremorris Co Mayo, Eire (Prizewinner)

Critical Realism – Aspects of British Life Today, Castle Museum, Nottingham (Touring)

The Critical Eye, Nottingham Library (Touring)

38 Lexington Street – Thumb Gallery Artist, London

13th International Independante Exhibition of Prints, Kanagawa, Yokohama, Japan (Purchase Prize)

3rd International Print Biennale, Taiwan, Republic of China

1988 Combies/Davies/Kane, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin

Exchange: Ireland/Deutschland, Guiness Hop Store, Dublin – Cork, Limerick, Ulster Museum, Belfast

10th International Print Biennale, Bradford, England –Britain and Australia (Touring)

Modern Block Print, Xylon Museum and Workshops, Schwetzinger, West Germany

56 Group Wales, Mostyn Gallery Llandudno, Wales

Bath Contemporary Art Fair, Thumb Gallery, London

12th International Print Biennale, Cracow, Poland

York Art Fair – Thumb Gallery, London

Impressions –1, Spanish Arch Gallery, Galway Arts Festival – Eire (Prizewinner)

Breaking–Out, Theatre Museum, Covent Garden, London

11th International Triennial of Origianal Graphic Art, Grenchen, Switzerland (Prizewinner)

Cologne International Art Fair – On-the-Wall Gallery, Belfast

14th International Independent Exhibition of Prints in Kanagawa, Yokohama, Japan

New Acquisitions, Dean Clough Contemporary Art Gallery, Halifax

3rd International Contemporary Air Fair, Los Angeles – Thumb Gallery, London

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1989 New Year, New Work – Andrew Knight Gallery, Cardiff

1st Bharat Bhauan International Biennial of Prints 1989, Bhopal, India

3rd Biennial Exhibition of Prints in Wakayma, Museum of Modern Art, Wakayama, Japan

The Bite of the Print – An exhibition of prints by five artists – Art Space Gallery, London

4th International Contemporary Art Fair, London, Olympia – Art Space Gallery, London

L ‘Europe Des Graveurs, 1989 – Bibliotheque Muncipale, Grenoble, France

Painterly Prints, Off-Centre Gallery, Bristol (Touring)

Exchange: Deutschland/Ireland – Wurzburg, Bonn, Erlangen, Frankfurt, West Germany

Nurnburg Art 4 – Galerie Siegert, Basel, Switzerland

The Cutting Edge, Contemporary Carvings and Woodcuts, Manchester City Art Gallery

9th International Biennale of Humour and Satire, Gabrouo, Bulgaria

International Biennale of Graphic Art, Ljubljana, Yugoslavia

International Print Biennale, Varna, Bulgaria

Impression 2, Spanish Arch Gallery, Galway Arts Festival – Eire

9th Norwegian International Print Triennale, Fredrikstad, Norway (Prizewinner)

Guardian Gallery, Bristol ‘89 Exhibiton

14th Annual Freemantle Print Award Exhibition, Freemantle Arts Centre, Western Australia

Format de Papier, Cul-des-Sarts, Couvin, Belgium

Artists Against War and Violence – Artists for Peace – Xylon Gallery and Workshops, Schwetingen/Berlin/Warsaw/Paris

Prints with a Point, 89 – Off-Centre Gallery, Bristol (Touring)

Contemporary Acquistitions, – Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

Biennale Impreza – 89, Ivano-Frankivsk Art Museum, Ukraine, U.S.S.R

Cologne Inernational Art Fair – Kerlin Gallery, Belfast

15th International Independante Exhibition of Prints in Kanagawa, Yokohama, Japan

4th International Print Biennale, Taiwan, Republic of China

1990 Art ‘90 London Contemporary Art Fair, Art Space Gallery, London

Alistair Grant and Friends at the R.C.A. New Gulbenkian Galleries R.C.A. London

Eighty to Ninety – Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth

Intergrafik ‘90 – 9th Triennale of Engaged Graphic Art, Berlin, West Germany

Premio Internazionale Biella 1990 Per L’Incisione, Biella, Italy

Where There is Discord – Cleveland Gallery, Middlesbrough (Touring)

The Compass Contribution, 21 Years of Contemporary Art 1969–1990’

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Top: Self Portrait–Out Of Eden 2 Below: Self Portrait– Out Of Eden 6

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Top: Winged Angels–1 Middle: Winged Angels–2 Below: Winged Angels–4

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Tramway, Glasgow

Thumb Gallery at the Natioanl Theatre, London

Sixth International Biennial Exhibition of Portrait Drawings and Graphics, Tuzla, Yugoslavia

11th British International Print Biennale, Bradford, England (Touring) – (Prizewinner)

109th Royal Ulster Academy of Art Exhibition, Department of Architecture, Queens University, Belfast (Print Award)

11th International Impact Art Festival ‘90 International Art Center of Kyoto, Japan

Interprint, Lviv ‘90 – Museum of The History of Religion and Atheism, Lviv, U.S.S.R.

16th International Independante Exhibition of Prints in Kanagawa, Yokohama, Japan

1991 11th International Biennale of Humour and Satire, Gabrouo, Bulgaria

International Print Biennale, Cracow, Poland

The International Print Exhibition Intergrafia ‘91 in Katowice, Poland

International Print Biennale, Varna, Bulgaria

3rd Bharat Bhauan International Biennial of Prints 1991, Bhopal, India

Biennale Impreza – 91, Ivano-Frankivsk Art Museum, Ukraine, U.S.S.R

12th International Impact Art Festival ‘90 International Art Center of Kyoto, Japan

European Exhibition of Large Format Printmaking – Guiness Hop Store, Dublin, Eire

International Senefelder-Stiftung, Busing-Palais Offenbach, Germany

1992 Norwegian International Print Biennale, Fredrikstad, Norway

Modern Block Print, Xylon Museum, Gallery and Workshops, Schwetzingen, West Germany

13th International Impact Art Festival ‘90 International Art Center of Kyoto, Japan

1993 14th British International Print Biennale, Bradford, England

13th International Biennale of Humour and Satire, Gabrouo, Bulgaria

International Biennale Petit Format de Papier, Cul-Des-Sarts, Couvin, Belgium

Biennale Impreza – 93, Ivano-Frankivsk Art Museum, Ukraine, U.S.S.R

14th International Impact Art Festival ‘90 International Art Center of Kyoto, Japan

Ist International Print Biennale Maastricht 1993, The Netherlands

2nd International Biennale of Graphic Arts, Gyor, Hungary

U.N.E.A.C. Ciudad de la Habana, Cuba

Ist Egyptian International Print Triennale

1995 15th International Biennale of Humour and Satire, Gabrouo, Bulgaria

7th Bharat Bhauan International Biennial of Prints 1991, Bhopal, India

1995/96 Poetic Land – Political Territory, NCCA Touring Exhibition, City Library and Arts Centre, Sunderland

1997 Invited Artist – Limited Edition, Hawkes Bay Exhibition Centre, Hastings, New Zealand

Invited Artist – Someone Else’s Country, WSA Gallery, Hamilton, New Zealand

1999 Recent Additions– 3 Artists, Sarjeant Gallery, Wanganui, New Zealand

2000 Invited Artist –Traces, ASA Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand

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2001 Tutors Show – Portfolio Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand

Drill – Artstation Tutors Exhibition, Artstation Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand

AWARDS1975 Southern Arts Bursary

1977 South East Arts Award

1978/79/80 Welsh Arts Council Artists Award

1979/82 Lowick House Printmaking Trust

1980 Royal National Eisteddfod of Wales (Prizewinner)

1981/87/88 Lowick House Residency, Northern Arts Association

1981 Special Projects Grant, Welsh Arts Council

1987/90 Northern Ireland Arts Council Major Award

1989 British Council Travelling Award

1993/94 Air Lingus Travel Award

cOMMISSIONS1980 ‘Seven Original Prints’ Welsh Arts Council, Rosentiels, London

1982 ‘Thirty–Five Artists Printmaking’, Royal College of Art, London

1983 ‘Brigit Skiold Memorial Trust Portfolio’

1983 ‘A New Landscape in Bolton’, Bolton Museum and Arts Gallery, North West Arts

1986 ‘Artist’s Choice’, Royal College of Art, London

1987 Paladin Poetry Series: Tom Raworth – ‘The Tottering State’

1992 ‘Survival in Disneyland’ – Joe Soap’s Canoe

1994 ‘Inside Out’ – Arts Council, Ireland

PRIZES, AWARDS, PURcHASES PRIZES

1980 Hull Print Competition: Art Gallery, Hull – Purchase Prizes

1984/86/90 British International Print Biennale, Bradford, England

1984 Listowel National Graphics Exhibition, Kerry, Eire

1987 Claremorris Open Exhibition, Claremorris, Co. Mayo, Eire – Print Award

1987 13th International Independante Exhibition of Prints’ Kanagawa, Yokohama, Japan –Purchase Prize

1988 11th International Triennial of Original, Graphic Art, Grenchen, Switzerland

1989 International Print Biennale, Varna, Bulgaria – Purchase Prize

1989 9th Norwegian International Print Triennale, Fredrikstad, Norway

1990 ‘Intergrafik’ ‘90– 9th Triennale of Engaged Graphic Art, Berlin, West Germany

1990 109th Royal Ulster Academy of Art Exhibition, Department of Architecture, Queens University, Belfast – Print Award

1991 10th International Biennial of Humour and Satire, Gabrovo, Bulgaria, Grand Prix – Golden Aesop Statuette

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Top: Winged Angels–6 Middle: Winged Angels–8 Below: Winged Angels–11

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1991 ‘Diploma’ – Impreza ‘91 Ivano-Frankivsk Museum, Ukraine U.S.S.R

1993 2nd International Biennale of Graphic Arts, Gyor, Hungary – Purchase Prize

PRINcIPAL cOLLEcTIONS Inner London Education Authority

National Museum of Wales

National Library of Wales

Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

Imperial War Museum, London

The Ulster Museum, Belfast

Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Arts Council of Great Britain

Welsh Arts Council

Arts Council of Northern Ireland

New York Public Library

Library of Congress, Washington D.C.

Southern Methodist University of Texas

Martin Ackerman Foundation Samuel Paley Library, Philadelphia

Museum of International Contemporary Graphic Art, Fredrikstad, Norway

Slovak National Gallery, Czechoslovakia

National Museum in Warsaw, Poland

Museum of Slasle, Poland

Museum Narodowe, Warsaw, Poland

Ukranian Museum of Contemporary Art U.S.S.R.

International Foundation Lyudmila Jivkova, Bulgaria

Union of Bulgarian Artists

Kanagawa Prefectual Gallery, Yokohama, Japan

Newport Museum and Art Gallery

Manchester City Art Gallery

The Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester

Stoke-on-Trent Museum and Art Gallery

Sheffield Art Gallery

Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery

Cleveland Gallery, Middlesbrough

Bradford Art Galleries and Museum

Ferens Art Gallery, Hull

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Castle Museum, Norwich

Bolton Museum and Art Gallery

Dean Clough Contemporary Art Collections, Halifax

Southern Arts Association

Eastern Arts Assocation

North West Arts Assocation

Liverpool University

Queens University, Belfast

Ireland Print Biennale Collection

Cambridge County Council

Wiltshire Education Committee

Hertfordshire Education Authority

Contemporary Arts Society for Wales

West Glamorgan Schools Art Loan Service

Bedford Schools Art Loan Service

Gateshead Central Library

Tameside Metropolitan Borough

Darlington Royal Infirmary

Trinity College, Carmarthen

Alton College, Hampshire

Bradford Grammar School

Hull Truck Theatre Company

Allied Irish Bank

Lowick House, Cumbria

Sunday Times

Rank Xerox

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ABOUT THE AUTHORSProFESSor MichaEl Dunn studied Fine Arts at the University of Canterbury and Art History at Melbourne University and has a PhD from the University of Auckland. He was Head of Art History at Auckland before being appointed Head of the Elam School of Fine Arts in 1994. He has published extensively on New Zealand Art. His books include Contemporary New Zealand Painting, Sydney, 1996, and A Concise History of New Zealand Painting, Sydney, 1993.

carolE ShEPhEarD is an Associate Professor of Fine Art, Deputy Head Elam School and Head of Graduate Studies at the Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland. Her professional activities include curatorial, critical and advisory roles in the field of fine art and includes print, gender studies and art education. She has been on arts advisory boards, held directorships, served on numerous panels and working parties and is a consultant for many private and public organisations. Carole has been a professional artist for over twenty years, exhibits regularly both nationally and internationally and has work in many private and public art collections throughout the country. Her new research project–The Museum of Cultural Anxiety (M.O.C.A.) is open to the public with her as artist, curator and director. Here she will present real and fictive material in a private museum-like setting through changing displays installations and performances. The collecting, construction, and manipulating of objects that reconstruct historical narratives and reshape memory forms that basis of this research and is aimed at extending the hermetic borders of art so that it can engage in broader artistic, political and social issues.

Dr JoannE Drayton was educated in Christchurch, New Zealand, where she graduated from the University of Canterbury with a first-class honours degree in Art History in 1992. More recently she has completed a doctorate on the life and work of Edith Collier (published in 1999), and has curated the exhibition Edith Collier and the Woman of Her Circle, which is touring New Zealand’s major galleries between August 1999 and December 2001. She has published a number of papers and articles on art history, and is currently writing a book and curating a touring exhibition on artist Rhona Haszard. She lectures in Art and Design History and Theory at UNITEC in Auckland.

EDwarD hanFling teaches in the Department of Art History at the University of Auckland in the areas of 19th and 20th century European art, and also teaches a course on 20th century Modernism at the Auckland University of Technology. He is currently working on a doctoral thesis at the University of Auckland dealing with issues of evaluation in relation to a range of contemporary New Zealand artists including Ian Scott, Douglas Badcock, Dick Frizzell, Alvin Pankhurst and Alan Wright. An idea central to this research is that the value of artworks is determined by their audience, so that value must be seen as contingent upon a series of different ‘interpretive communities’. The focus is on artmaking practices that fall outside of ‘academic’ histories of New Zealand art (‘the canon’) and on crossovers that have occurred beween supposedly ‘high’ and ‘low’ forms of art, problematising the stability of the boundary between these. Edward Hanfling has had published the following articles and conference papers:

Up with Badcock, Pre/dictions: the role of art at the end of the millennium, Art Association of Australia Conference, Victoria University of Wellington, 1999.

Bill’s Birds and Buller’s Birds: The Bizarre and the Banal in the World of Bill Hammond, The Worry Index: Paintings by Bill Hammond: Papers from a Seminar, Auckland Art Gallery, 2000.

Before and After: Alvin Pankhurst, Spiral Art Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand Listener, June 17-23, 2000.

Mrkusich: Achromatics and Architecture, Bulletin of New Zealand Art History, Volume 21, 2000.

Milan Mrkusich: The 1950s, in Edward Hanfling & Francis Pound, Gordon Walters: Milan Mrkusich: Works from the 1950s, Auckland: Sue Crockford Gallery, 2000.

Behind the Image, in Anthony Davies, Kaimanawa Horses, Auckland: Lopdell House Gallery, 2001space for a litle

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ABOUT ALfRED cHAPMANIn 1851 Alfred Chapman, Joseph Rhodes and William B Rhodes applied for and obtained 25,000 acres of land east of Otane in the vicinity of Elsthorpe, Hawke’s Bay. Alfred Chapman and Joseph Rhodes stocked the station with 500 sheep each, and Alfred, with the help of his brother Frederick, managed the property. They named the station Edenham after the parish of Edenham, Elsthorpe and Grimsthorpe in Lincolnshire, England, of which their father was vicar. The two brothers along with a man named Stutfield worked and lived together breaking in the farm. During June to November 1854, Frederick Chapman kept a diary and his brother Alfred, whose non-de-plume was Alfred Steelpen, illustrated it with pen and ink sketches. Alfred also documented their daily lives with a series of ink and watercolour paintings each glued into an embossed album, signed and described.

Alfred was not only an artist but also an engineer and builder. He was constantly employed in designing and constructing farm implements and tools such as sheep skin whips, pack saddles and dog kennels. Alfred’s engineering skills were most evident in his design and construction of a flour-mill.

The diary and sketches allow us to have an intimate glimpse into the rich tapestry of Frederick and Alfred’s daily lives; how they lived without the support of women; how they spent their leisure hours and how they successfully managed and broke in the Edenham farm property.

Further information for Alfred Chapman images:

1 (page 17) Alfred’s first house.

2 (page 19) “Mr Roberts house in Wellington. The English Church is the building on the hill, at the back of the high red hotel”. Alfred Chapman

3 (page 24) No words - but this is probably the front view of Chapman’s house Edenham Station.

4 (page 25) “Shed in the sheep pen to the right, is the old weigh house for sheep before shearing. The V hut is for men to sleep in. The other is the kitchen. The creek to the left is the boundary of this run for some distance. The wide river is the Wangakuri which forms boundary between Hargreaves and myself. Some of the wood piled ready for the new shed”. Alfred Chapman

5 (page 29) Back view of Chapman’s house Edenham Station March 1856.

6 (page 31) “The smart red and blue things by the side of the house are our blankets airing!” A.C.

7 (page 33) “The farm of the ... where my creek joins the Wangakuri and where they both join the sea. Hargreaves run commences at this shed by the sea on the right. The left side belongs to the Maoris. The centre foreground is intended to represent the end of this run”. c A.C.

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AckNOWLEDGEMENTS Assistance and financial support from Unitec, Polytechnic, Auckland Hawke’s Bay Cultural Trust Andrea Du Chatenier Stella Cosgrove Margaret Cranwell Dr. Joanne Drayton Prof. Michael Dunn Andrew Harrison Patrick Flynn Gail Ford Jenni Gillam Enyth Good Edward Hanfling Kyla MacKenzie Maree Mills Ngaire Molyneux Steve Payne–Ed Pac Auckland Gail Pope Ken Robinson Carole Shepheard Haare Williams– Maori Director Unitec

Publisher: Unitec Polytechnic, School Of Design, Carrington Road, Auckland Designer: Jill Webster Photographer: Patrick Flynn ISBN: 0-473-08319-1 1,000 copies of this catalogue have been printed Cover printed on 350 gsm Magno Satin, Text printed on 170 gsm Euro Matt Anthony Davies: email–anthonydavies@paradise.net.nz Gallery: Anthony Davies is represented by Portfolio Gallery, Lorne Street, Auckland email– sales@portfolioart.co.nz

ISBN 0-473-08319-1