New Zealand Memorial

Several war memorials stand in Hyde Park corner marking the relationship between Britain and those countries that supported her during the first and second world wars.

Today is New Zealand's national day. Waitangi Day, so named as on February 6th 1840 representatives of Queen Victoria and several Maori Chiefs signed a treaty that is the founding document of modern New Zealand, at Waitangi.

The memorial sculpture, a collaborative work by New Zealander Paul Dibble has iconic New Zealand folklore on each of the standards. Six of the standards sit slightly apart from the group and are arranged to represent the southern cross (star constellation). All of the standards have a cross on the top that glows at night to represent the New Zealand sky.

The Enduring Antarctic Adventure of Clare Plug

 Illustration: Clare Plug. Ice Crack 2, 2008.

The New Zealand textile artist Clare Plug has spent the last few years of her career developing a fascinating body of work that entails intimately observed details along with wider conceptions and observations of the most rarely visited of all the planets continents.

In 2006 Plug was lucky enough to visit the continent of Antarctica as part of a fellowship, staying with the official government Antarctica NZ at Scott Base in the vicinity of the Ross Ice Shelf. It is no small exaggeration to say that this experience fundamentally changed her views and the entire aspect of her work, so much so that much of the textile art work that she produces to this day is haunted by this most spectacular and hauntingly beautiful continent.

Illustration: Clare Plug. Ice Crack 2 (detail), 2008.

The three works shown here are examples of Plug's Antarctica Series which explores a number of aspects of the continent from the fragile and relatively recent human experience, to the much older and grander sweep of geological and climatic history that has become so pressingly relevant in our own contemporary world.

Through discharge dyeing, applique and quilting techniques, Plug has been able to not only detail her own experiences along with those of others past and present, but perhaps more importantly to focus our attention on the emotional ambience of the landscape and the sense of harsh beauty that it entails. Through her sensitive use of textural colour and stitching, the artist can help us to identify the strange combination of a climate that is so harsh that it can kill most life forms, while at the same time being supremely fragile, delicate and sensitive and so easily prone to destruction by outside forces.

Illustration: Clare Plug. Midnight at the Barne Glacier, 2008.

These moody and sometimes even ethereal textile pieces are in many regards emotionally observed landscapes. Admittedly, they can only give us an indication as to the multiple experiences that would be observed on the continent itself. However, Plugs work has such a defined ambient compositional quality to it that although most of us will probably never visit the continent itself, we can at least share some of the wonder and sheer magnetism of this most intriguing and other-worldly part of the planet.

Through her landscapes, both climatically and geographically based, humans seem to make only the barest and most tenuous of impressions. No more obvious an example of this underlying feeling is Out on the Barrier which seems to give a hint of a hauntingly indistinct portrayal of a possible human symbol, or not. To show our lack of domination of one continent out of seven, everything in Antarctica seems transient, misleading, even misdirected seeming at times to be playing tricks on our senses and our preconceptions. The physical and emotional scale of the experience seems well beyond the human scale in which to focus, catalogue and identify. This often featureless and unimaginably empty continent challenges us to imagine a world where the human species cannot automatically deem themselves dominant, and for our own sanity that feeling of inadequacy mixed with awe, can only be for the betterment of us all.

Illustration: Clare Plug. Out on the Barrier, 2008.

A wide range of Plug's textile art pieces were part of the Look South exhibition held at the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch New Zealand. This exhibition was due to continue until the end of September. However, due to the major earthquake experienced by South Island, the exhibition has had to disappointingly close early, though I am sure Plugs hauntingly beautiful textile work will be seen at many more venues in the near future.

Clare Plug has a web presence where much more of her work can be seen. She has exhibited in New Zealand, the US and Europe as well as being featured in a number of publications. Another interesting site listed is that of Antarctica NZ which gives details of New Zealand's official work in Antarctica as well as information on Scott Base where Plug stayed in 2006. On the site there is a webcam of the base which updates every 15 minutes. Both sites can be found in the Reference links section below.

Illustration: Clare Plug. Out on the Barrier (detail), 2008.

All images were used with the kind persmission of the artist.

Reference links:
Clare Plug website
Antarctica New Zealand

Kowhaiwhai - Maori Rafter Patterns

Kowhaiwhai is a form of Maori decoration that takes the form of abstract curved pattern work. These painted decorative patterns usually portrayed in traditional colours of red, white and black, are often placed within Maori meeting houses. The rafters of these houses are covered in Kowhaiwhai work. However, this form of decoration was never limited in the past to meeting houses as the pattern work could be found on a number of objects from water carriers to canoes.

It is interesting to note that this form of decoration is very closely allied in some respects at least, to both woodcarving and tattoo work, which it does resemble in many ways. However, this form of painted decoration, by its very nature, does not have the same permanence as woodcarving or tattooing and is often seen as purposely transitory.

Much of the pattern work was produced on an amateur basis with no previous experience being strictly necessary. This does not mean however that Kowhaiwhai is a random sequence of curled and wavy lines produced haphazardly by the amateur. The pattern work does follow traditional parameters and can be seen as a complex and systematic geometrical matrix, which has in its remit a number of endless permutations.

The main purpose of Kowhaiwhai and the significance of its use in meeting houses is its association with lineage and ancestry. The story of succeeding generations can be told through the subtle permutations of line and curve. Some even suggest that these rafter patterns were some form of early Maori writing, though it seems that the pattern work could well be in the form of memory markers where pattern work causes memory triggers of past events and individuals, rather than that of a formal written language.

The pattern work has a standard recurring 'curl' as its main motif. This curl is put through a range of transformations and modifications. The curl motif is said to represent the young curled leaf of a fern plant. This would make logical sense as this motif is meant to represent, at least in one form, the growth or continuation of life. What could be more fitting for pattern work that was meant to represent the continuation of the story of generations, than that of the perpetuation of life through those generations.

The Kowhaiwhai is still very much a vibrant and continuing tradition in modern New Zealand and Maori culture. It is reused and reinterpreted by contemporary artists and designers and the curl motif can be seen on any number of items including personal jewellery, throughout New Zealand.

Further reading links:
Carved Maori houses of western and northern areas of New Zealand (Dominion Museum monograph)
Maori carving illustrated
Painted Histories: Early Maori Figurative Painting (Auckland University Press Book)
Maori carving
Maori rafter and taniko designs
The Te Ore Ore Maori House Masterton
Te Whare Runanga =: The Maori Meeting House
The great carved house Mataatua of Whakatane,
Maori patterns painted and carved
Kōwhaiwhai, geometry of Aotearoa
Spiral-dominated compositions in pare (door lintels)
Maori Tattooing (Dover Pictorial Archives)
The Carver and the Artist: Maori Art in the Twentieth Century
Maori Art and Design
Maori: Art and Culture
Whakairo: Maori Tribal Art
Te Toi Whakairo: The Art of Maori Carving
The Art of Maori Weaving: The Eternal Thread/Te Aho Mutunga Kore

Owen Jones and the Ornament of Savage Tribes

Illustration: Savage tribes Ornament from Owen Jones The Grammar of Ornament, 1856.

As part of Owen Jones 1856 publication The Grammar of Ornament a section dedicated to the ornament of 'Savage Tribes' is included. In fact, the first chapter and first three colour plates of the book belong to this section.

It is interesting to note what exactly Jones considered to be 'Savage' as opposed to civilized. He was quite specific as to the definition as all the images and text of the chapter concern themselves with cultures spanning the Pacific Ocean, with decorative pattern work from Hawaii, Fiji, Tahiti, New Zealand and New Guinea. What is more interesting however, is that although Jones did make certain references to Pacific Islanders being at 'an early stage of civilisation', a phrase which he repeats often throughout the first chapter of the book, he is on the whole positive and admiring as to the level of the craftsmanship that was used in order to produce the decorative work he displays in his book.

 Illustration: Handle of a Paddle illustration from Owen Jones The Grammar of Ornament, 1856.

However to be fair, throughout the nineteenth century there was a large amount of inbuilt racism and cultural snobbery that helped to fuel and perhaps more importantly legitimise the various European empires, but sometimes we can mistake a title such as Ornament of Savage Tribes, as perhaps a harsher slur than was meant. Jones was a product of his time and was no doubt indoctrinated into the ideals that European culture played in the grander picture, or at least as far as Europeans were concerned. However, Jones was relatively analytical for the period in his description of the ornamental works of 'Savage Tribes' and probably saw the chapter as an interesting stage within the context of human decoration. This does not change the fact that the chapter was firmly placed at the front of the book, strongly implying that Pacific Island culture and its decorative work was a forerunner to that of the more sophisticated work of cultures that followed in later the chapters of the book.That the sequence eventually led to Europe, which dominated the last five chapters of the book, was probably not a coincidence.

Illustration: Head of a New Guinea Canoe illustration from Owen Jones The Grammar of Ornament, 1856.

Today we might well find it puzzling that cultures in different parts of the world and from different periods in time could be placed in the order of importance that suited a particular continent of people, namely Europe. We would now see, or hope to see, that all human cultures have added their own significant elements to the greater human culture, all are legitimate and all should be judged as equal no matter whether they created palaces or lived in tents, produced reams of literature or had no written language, produced delicate porcelain or decorated bark.

 Illustration: Head of a New Guinea Canoe illustration from Owen Jones The Grammar of Ornament, 1856.

Owen Jones book is an interesting example of ideas and theories that are set within their period along with all the illogical and irrational elements that go to make up that time frame. No one is ever able to extract themselves entirely from their own cultural era and we should always be aware of this when flicking through the pages of books such as Jones The Grammar of Ornament.

Illustration: Side of a New Zealand Canoe illustration from Owen Jones The Grammar of Ornament, 1856.

Further reading links:

The Grammar of Ornament: All 100 Color Plates from the Folio Edition of the Great Victorian Sourcebook of Historic Design (Dover Pictorial Archive Series)
The Grammar of Ornament
Grammar of Ornament: A Monumental Work of Art
Unity of Heart: Culture and Change in a Polynesian Atoll Society
Maori and Polynesian, Their Origin, History and Culture
Polynesian Crafts
Making a Hawaiian quilt (Polynesian arts & crafts series)
Hiapo: Past And Present in Niuean Barkcloth
Polynesian Barkcloth (Shire Ethnography)
Tifaifai and Quilts of Polynesia
Hawaiian Applique
How to Weave Hawaiian Coconut Palm Fronds