Requiem: Ralph Hotere

“Hotere has been investigating blackness throughout his career, exploring the various darknesses - Jungian darkness, Freudian darkness, theological darkness and the darkness of Māori mythology. These abstract notions, however, are in turn balanced by an acute awareness of the natural world and of where he stands as a person…” - Gregory O’Brien [1] 

Gow Langsford Gallery is delighted to present Ralph Hotere: Requiem, an exhibition of selected works by the distinguished artist. Hotere is widely considered to be one of the all-time greats of New Zealand art, and his work is held in institutional and private collections throughout the country. Hotere is perhaps best known for his dark palette abstract works, which were often painted with automotive lacquer. Ralph Hotere: Requiem showcases a selected group of artworks by the artist. This selection includes a diverse range of works, covering the early 1970s through to the late 1980s, key periods of his output. Collectively, they present a compelling cross-section of the artist’s career.

Hotere created his Requiem series in tribute to his friend, Tony Watson, a notable composer who died in 1973. The two men had become friends and drinking companions after Watson was appointed the University of Otago’s Mozart Fellow in 1970 and again in 1971.[2] After Watson’s death, Hotere created his Requiem works. Two works from this series are included in this exhibition, Requiem (for Tony Watson), from 1973, and Requiem, from 1975.

Requiem (for Tony Watson) is painted in lacquer on hardboard, and it features bands of thin lines of purple and red against a black background. A large plane of modulated grey dominates the composition. Of this particular work, Hotere biographer Vincent O’Sullivan stated, “When Ralph’s Auckland businessman friend Roger Wall bought one of them [the Requiem paintings] 20 years later, the artist assured him he had got hold of ‘my best work’”.[3]  It is a work that is distinctively by Hotere’s hand, even though few works by the artist featured such a palette. Requiem has some visual similarities to its companion piece, though a more muted palette. It features the same banded vertical lines and overall aesthetic. Though in the use of dyes and washes, Hotere has created a work of less precise, more lyrical effect.  

Hotere created Drawing for Ian Wedde’s ‘Pathway to the Sea’ in 1975. This work is part of a series of responses the artist made to a poem by Ian Wedde. The painter and the poet shared the conviction that a planned aluminium smelter development near to Aramoana would be environmentally and socially disastrous. Wedde’s eloquent longform poem Pathway to the Sea voiced his firm opposition to the development. Hotere, who engaged with the work of several poets throughout his career, incorporated some elements of the poem into his artwork around this time. Drawing for Ian Wedde’s ‘Pathway to the Sea’ is beautifully rendered in ink and watercolour, and similarly lyrical to Requiem. With its tight groupings of thin vertical lines and muted palette, the work subtly hums.

Port Chalmers (Dawn Water Poem) c.1980 shares compositional and thematic similarities to the Requiem and Pathway to the Sea works, though it features a very different, much warmer palette. In hues of magenta, red, orange and yellow, the work sets out banded vertical lines, and is layered in text. The word ‘sunrise’ is repeated over and again, with a direct acknowledgement of the work of poet Bill Manhire. Hotere responded to Manhire’s poetry in numerous works throughout his career – so much so that the pair had an open and reciprocal agreement to use one another’s work. Port Chalmers (Dawn Water Poem) is a fitting tribute to one of the great collaborations of New Zealand’s art history.

Koputai – Blue Gums …and daisies falling is the largest of the works included in this exhibition. Painted in 1989, it is also the most recent. Unlike the other works, it appears to have a representational element, with the washes of paint suggesting a view of the Aramoana peninsula from Port Chalmers. This reading is reinforced by the word ‘Aramoana’ painted onto the canvas beneath a suggestive shadowy wash in the background. Hotere’s distinctive use of text and expressive application of paint are entirely evident. This work, with its central reference to the place that Hotere called home for much of his life, connects with the key themes of the artist’s oeuvre.

In addition to this exceptional grouping of artworks, Ralph Hotere: Requiem includes a striking black and white photographic portrait of the artist taken by Marti Friedlander in 1978. Collectively this selection offers a compelling snapshot of the work of an artist of great stature and enduring significance to the national artistic lexicon.

[1] Gregory O’Brien, Hotere: Out the Black Window (Auckland: Godwit Publishing, 1997). p. 119.

[2] Vincent O’Sullivan, The Dark is Light Enough (Auckland: Penguin, Random House, 2020). p. 215.

[3] Ibid. 217.