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Media release

30 April, 2007

Heritage painting of many lifetimes

Te Henga artist Allie Eagle’s stunning historical painting for the Waitakere City Council’s chamber building was officially unveiled today, Monday 30 April 2007.

The work, described by the artist as “a painting of a lifetime”, depicts how Waitakere region’s immigrants re-shaped the landscape according to their particular cultures.

It is also a possible “first” for a New Zealand council to have commissioned a painting in a narrative style, based on the “Italianate” style of both post-Renaissance court painters and Netherlandal Dutch group portraits.

Titled Child Jesus in the Temple: a civic parable for West Auckland, the painting draws from European medieval civic paintings of Biblical theme.

To celebrate Waitakere’s diversity through the medium of a seven metre by two metre watercolour and encaustic wax panels, Allie Eagle has told a story of the ethos of Waitakere that speaks to the heart of the community.

The largely realist-expressionist painting depicts a sprinkling of Waitakere people at a hui in an apple orchard.

In contextualising an array of characters past and present Allie Eagle and her Atelier*-style workshop of artists and assistants drawn upon subjects both celebrated and lesser known, past and present.

The buccaneering Portugese Don Buck rides his horse in the background to the hui.

The painter Goldie has already arrived, in the company of such present people day folk as historian Graeme Murdoch, in the role of narrator, Maraea Tahinu as a Maori gum digger’s daughter, historian Ben Copedo (English and Italian descent) and Ross and Vicki Bethell.

At the painting’s axis a young woman examines a wedding dress in the company of some of the elders of Henderson’s Dutch, Croatian and Lebanese descendents.

The young woman is Anna Nicholson of Te Henga, the daughter of a close friend of the artist’s; the couple nearest to her are Councillor Assid Corban and his wife Miriam.

From this nucleus, hui participants are each intent on his and her own tasks. However, in the style of group portraits from the European tradition, the subjects are all looking in the same direction..

Allie Eagle’s passionate attachment to the interconnection of Waitakere’s land and people is evident in every centimetre of this extraordinary work. She has paid particular attention to the interface between Maori and Pakeha.

Acknowledged as a foremost feminist radical painter of the 1970s, Allie has taught many students at Elam School of Fine Arts, Manukau Technical Institute and at major high schools in the Auckland region.

“I’ve always been an issues painter. I’m very interested in 19th Century New Zealand paintings and since the 70s have used watercolours sometimes in a politically subversive way. Watercolour is such a soft, gentle medium that I use to challenge and disturb,” says Allie.

“This may well be one of the largest watercolour paintings in the world.

“In tackling this painting we researched elements of European, Croatian, Scottish and Dutch ancestry, with a firm commitment to the Tangata Whenua.

“This was an enormous research project where we became100 per cent involved in the stories of people I was to paint. It was an arbitrary selection that in many ways came to me. I was looking for someone to paint who could be the model for a Croatian gum digger (a major figure in the work) and settled on someone of Irish ancestry: my friend Chris Baker, my own drain layer who does as many excavations as anyone I know…who works to keep peoples lives’ sweet,” she says.

“The image of Miriam Corban whose folks came from the Lebanon, showing the young woman the wedding dress is an elegant way of approaching the subject of heredity, the continuation of families.

“I wanted to hear the hopes and aspirations of Waitakere’s citizens. In particular, I wanted to highlight the care of the elderly in this work,” says Allie.

When the painting is unveiled, watch for local scenes such as the Babich subdivision at Oratia, Larnoch at Mt Lebanon.

You’ll notice changes of season, a mixture of eras and young and old represented.

ENDS

* Atelier – an old style artists’ workshop. Allie Eagle’s Atelier included Anabelle Cameron-Lewis, Sue Strom, Karen Davis, Anna and Ronnie Nicholson, Julie Wilson, Pamela Woods, Robin Binsley, Amee Hedges, Vicki Worthington, Jasanta Changlau, Joop and John Boortman, Gillian Palmer, Julie Bellamy, Eva Holub, Tana Padarova and Deidre Tollestrup.

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