Week 3 - Thursday artist talk: Ayesha Green

Ayesha Green Artist talk: “In her studio-based practice, Ayesha Green sustains a provocative engagement with processes of reproduction. By her own admission, Green utilises mimicry and copying to undermine the authority of symbolic objects, questioning the authenticity of their claims to power. While giving precedence to source material from the era of first contact between Māori and Pākehā, Green continues to draw on a wide range of references. Attempting to transmute the power of inherited objects and images by establishing new readings, Green thus pushes back at European-centric practices of anthropology and classification, and the demonstrable military and cultural domination of our shared colonial history.” *

• Drawing on works of artist Gottfried Lindauer, a settler-colonial painter

• Wants to undercut and subvert the idea of the “noble savage” in his works; paints abstracted versions that are almost cartoon-like in nature

• Related to the subjects she paints; “as a Māori woman, how can I refuse the idea of the noble savage and the idea of Māori as a dying race”

• “When you copy something, you take away its authority”, wanted to take away the authority that Lindauer has been given over this narrative

• Lindauer, paradoxical: painting “a dying race”, but also painting ancestors and capturing the mana of the person in the work; caught between colonial image-making and the joy that these works can bring to still be able to have a relationship with that person's image

• Copies of Lindauer’s paintings are available widely; the mana isn’t in the original, it’s in the image; Māori descendants and people interested in these works are already saying “the original isn't the thing that matters”; trying to dismantle the idea of something “original”

For Hine, 2017, Acrylic on recycled billboard vinyl, 3200 x 5700mm

• Tupaia: Māori noble and traveller who accompanied British settlers on various voyages; learned Western visual styles of representation

• Copied the work, thinking about material and scale; used vinyl (old billboard material)

• Billboards bring through the notion of consumption; relates to the economics of exchange, and the exchange taking place in the image; what does it mean for Māori and Pakeha to be exchanging with one another, what does biculturalism look like?

Mei, 2016, acrylic on board, acrylic on board, 1750 x 1220 mm

From Auckland Art Gallery:

"An image, of an image, of an image, of an image. This is the echoing mantra of painter Ayesha Green’s Mei, 2016. In recent years the artist has forged her own distinctive style and aesthetic, bringing a new exuberance to the practice of portraiture. With her signature block colour and flattened image painting style the iconic bronze statue of Pania of the Reef on Napier’s Marine Parade is recast into the tones of the living. The subject of this painting is Mei Robins, not Pania, who as a young woman in the early 1950s was the model for the statue’s head.

Ngāti Kahungunu tribal narratives tell us the maiden Pania was cast by her fellow sea peoples into a reef to prevent her from returning to her lover Karetoki on land. Just beyond the breakwater of Napier harbour, Pania remains underwater with the sea life. The story of Pania is one of love, loss and transformation. In the 1950s the transformation of Mei into an image of Pania was a part of the city’s beautification initiative, which over time has seen Pania become a tourist attraction and civic icon for Napier and the region. Titling the work Mei reminds us that images (and Pania) have whakapapa (genealogical connections) and mauri (life force). Green brings these various readings to the fore as a way of reconsidering questions of representation, beauty and agency."

• Mei is Ayesha’s relative, chosen to model for the Pania of the Reef sculpture in Napier, NZ

• Urban boosterism: idea of making a town more desirable; leisure class was growing in the 1950s, and art was a part of this

• Mei was chosen for being “the most Māori-looking girl” out of her class at a local Māori girls' school; her photo was taken and sent to Italy to be sculpted

• Pania of the reef: bronze statue; Pania Reef: sea landmark, a section of coastline and monument in the landscape

• For Māori, the landscape IS personified; it’s not “Pania of the Reef”, Pania is the reef; there is a clash in the Eurocentric view and the Māori view of who Pania is

• Wanted to think about allowing the landscape to continue to be a monument; the idea of the person already exists in the land

• “Dusky maiden” trope is present in the statue, Mei is a child immortalized in bronze; her photograph wasn’t taken topless, but the statue was sculpted topless, which caused her a lot of embarrassment; it was not a portrayal she consented to

• How can we acknowledge Mei as a human? In taking away the sculpture from the world in the painted abstraction, can we give her back that humanity and reduce the sculpture’s agency as an object?

Ko te Tūhono, 2021, aluminium and steel cast of the gate to Ayesha’s marae; installed in the Octagon, Dunedin

• Ōtakou marae itself features concrete reliefs of wooden carvings; the wooden carvings were originally carved for a chief further north who died before the wharenui could be completed and were passed to his brother; the wharenui was later built for an exhibition (a bit like a world fair), then donated to the museum; the carvings were displaced as they were traded around the world with other indigenous artefacts

• During this time there was a revival of Māori art and craft; the government gave financial support to the revitalization of marae so long as they featured carvings; a government idea of “Māoriness” and “looking Māori” was necessary to receive that funding. However, during this time following WWII, there was a shortage of young men and carvers capable of making carvings; therefore, concrete casts were used.

• 3D scans were taken of the front of the wharenui, which was then used to make sand casts for the metal frame.

• Wanted to acknowledge the history of the government demanding a certain appearance of Maoriness from Māori, and the history of trade between regions

• Walking into the wharenui = walking into the ancestor; casting is identical on both sides, so visitors are neither walking in nor out; constant flux
  

Dear Ayesha, Love from Joseph, 2020, kōkōwai on stone paper

• Working with earth pigments; kōkōwai = spots where Tane cut gashes in Papatuanuku to separate her and Ranginui; spiritual material

• Ground down to make an earth pigment; used in the history of Maori rock painting and other forms of craft and art

• There is a lengthily process involved; someone would’ve had to be collecting, processing, transporting these pigments to where they are used; in looking at rock art, we can see the movement of people during the time; it’s not just a painting record but a record of movement

• “Joseph” refers to botanist Joseph Banks, a botanist who worked with Captain Cook on his voyages (though was kicked off for being a “brat” who no one wanted to work with)

• The way we talk about landscapes now is not how it was always talked about; the way we look at land is a new phenomenon that centres beauty

• Banks didn’t describe it as we do now, but talks about how the land was wrapped in a cloak of fog, natural elements coming together to feel very human; talks about greens and colours in the sky

• Wanted to take these entries and use them as letters, him telling Ayesha about the land she was from; they became postcards, almost love-letter-like; used the whenua itself to write the words he was leaving behind

• The paper is an eco-paper made from stone; Ayesha is in effect making her own rock art; relationship back to her own family’s history of rock art and drawing, recording stories of movement and peoples, and thinking about the way she is making movement of peoples...

Class afterthoughts, questions and notes:

• The idea of looking at a place for the sake of looking at it as opposed to getting something out of it/from the experience is relatively new and colonial

• The work is often in Ayesha’s mind for a good couple of years before it becomes a work, mulling it out; usually doing research first, then doing the work; there’s always a time that the work will be made, but it might not be known...

• Sometimes it’s about starting something, looking at it and knowing when it’s not doing something that’s working, but then looking at the work and asking “ok, what is it doing?”; being reflexive and honest with yourself about your work

• How do you decide what and how you make? When do you know/how do you know/do you try out different ways of thinking about materials?

  • Because a lot of the works involve copying, that was about scale; material always has its own inherent meaning to it... I ask myself “what’s the point?” of it being a painting, or a sculpture, etc. What is the point of using this particular meaning? Am I talking about the history of these materials, these languages (painting, text, sculpture, etc.), etc.

• How do you create an echo of something, how do you refer enough? How much information do I need to give for people to understand what I’m trying to do?

• What does it also gain in that translation?

  • “I feel like the first painting I made was Mei, that was about a year out of art school. Everything prior to that feels like a test, they weren’t that important; after that I made the work of Lindauer, and it went from there... it took me about a year to realize what I’d made in making Mei and the importance of it. I feel like my practice started after those Lindauer works, I learned [what I wanted to talk about] by making those works... what have I done here, what do they mean? I had to talk to people too to make them, and in talking about them I learned how to speak about what I was doing and reflect on my thoughts”

• Stick to it, it takes a bit of courage to look at something and say “it’s not doing the thing”, but to then look at it and ask “well what is it doing?”

• How did you come to the way that you paint, in that cartoonish way?

  • I’m not very good at painting or rendering! I wouldn’t be able to paint a realistic portrait, I don’t have the skills. I think as well the language I know of art... I think back to what I knew growing up; just because it’s not realistic doesn’t mean it’s not valid. Cartoons, Disney films, this is a language I know; I’ve come to paint in the way I do through understanding my own history of art, just like Lindauer painted the way he did because of his own history of art. I want to make sure that my audience is quite diverse too, and cartoons are accessible to many people and age groups. I hope I can give enough so that people interested in art and history can delve in, but also enough that people who aren’t can take something from it

• What were the most challenging elements of developing your practice?

  • Money and time to be honest; I could sit here and say developing these things etc., but money and time were big hurdles; also wanting to have an exhibition but no one wanting to show your work, while juggling work, comparing yourself to friends of the same age group... Going back to art school addressed a lot of the questions I had about the world

• Within the public sphere, what are the most common discussions you find yourself having with people around your work?

  • A lot of my friends and colleagues are quite aware of topics around Indigenous rights, etc., so I know when I’m at events where people might not be as familiar with these discussions it’s an opportunity to have discussions about these things. Difficult questions I sometimes encounter are more about trying to make sure people walk away with something that will affect their life in a meaningful way and make life better for Māori (especially people in power, who are Pakeha, who are older, who are rich, etc.). I’m proud of people for wanting to talk about Māori stuff with me, it shows they’re engaging, even if they’re a bit off in their knowledge

• Nothing should be copied directly because then you’re copying mana; there should always be a small difference between the original and the copy, especially when it comes to art in Maoridom; different motifs mean different things to different iwi, and can be extensions of much larger histories

• You talked about going from wood to concrete to aluminium, and the information that gained... I was wondering about that, because it’s something prevalent in my own practice.

  • It's kind of about how the material reacts to its own cast; the concrete is not going to hit all the points in the wood, which means the aluminium scan is going to smooth itself out. The human and material interaction in these casting processes means that those meanings shift through the material. The adding part, maybe the guy who made the 3D scan made alterations because it would’ve been too thick/thin to cast – there are humans adding things along the way too...

• You talked about wanting to include your cousin in Ko te Tūhono but chose against in due to budgeting reasons – that decision seems quite transformative, so were there other reasons behind that choice?

  • It was a choice about what I was doing for my iwi. The doorway would still survive as an artwork if my cousin wasn’t part of it, but not if the doorway was taken away from it... it was about what was important

• There are other layers of meaning, I.e. concrete as an industrial material, wood carving as a traditional craft practice, but also now aluminium as a new material to engage with

  • Exactly. Māori have the ability to use materials available to us, we aren’t a dying race limited to only “traditional” things, or performative means of creating

• Tradition is an invented idea, and shifts over time; part of a colonizing tactic was to keep Māori stationary, not being able to move forward or engage in their culture either.

• Traditions are just things done over and over again, over time