Our friends in Britain send us messages about the weather and/or political situation, both of which sound as uninspiring as each other. But here in Auckland, there is also something of an air of gloom. The cost of living is soaring, support for the Ardern government is dropping and the weather is cool, overcast and prone to drizzle. We point out that things are exponentially worse in the UK, but people, as you know, are generally only concerned with the ‘things’ that immediately confront them, like rent and the price of cauliflowers.
Our immediate and self-centred concern is to find something to amuse us in this city which still fails to dazzle. We settle for a trip to Auckland’s art gallery, where there are two current exhibitions of interest: one featuring the New Zealand artist, Dame Robin White, whose work focusses on indigenous populations, and another featuring the Mexican artists, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, famous as much for their public and personal lives as for their art. Both of these exhibitions focus on the strong, almost fierce attachments these artists share for their home countries, their politics and traditions.
Auckland is a hilly city; the art gallery sits on a hill in the CBD, while Ponsonby sits on another hill to the west. Between them is the low reclaimed land of Victoria Park through which we walk before climbing back up towards the Sky Tower that juts its concrete column incongruously out of the pavement. All around, there are road works and construction sites and, amongst these, it’s difficult to find a single attractive building. The art gallery is an exception. First opened in 1888 as a public library it’s been extended more recently into a light contemporary space with interconnecting exhibition rooms surrounding an airy galleried foyer. Nineteenth century on the outside, 21st century indoors.
As the weather isn’t great and I’m feeling decidedly lacking in energy, we take the exhibitions over two days. Robin White is a champion of the local art of New Zealand, Fiji, Tonga and other islands. Onto enormous canvasses of traditional geometric stencilling, she inserts the everyday objects of the artists’ homes, an addition which, while paying tribute to the lives of the islanders, simultaneously demonstrates the Western preoccupation with the personal, the individual, something lacking in the islanders themselves. The result is striking, but I can’t decide if these large tapa cloths represent a departure from or a repeat of history.
The Mexican exhibition echoes White’s love of bold vibrant colours, but there the similarities end. There’s nothing gentle or homely about Rivera’s murals; grand political statements, the style influenced by contemporary artists and friends, such as Matisse and Picasso. By contrast, Kahlo’s paintings are intensely personal, most often self-portraits that make statements about her own physical and emotional pain. All the while her identity as an ethnically mixed Mexican woman is constantly reaffirmed in both her art and her exotic dress.
The two artists, married, divorced and remarried, were conspicuous political activists, supporters of communism and revolution and, at one point, Kahlo had a brief affair with Trotsky. They set the scene for post-revolutionary Mexican art: bold statements that mix the surreal with the social realism. This style is perhaps best summed up by their friend and artist, Sequeiros who wrote: “The artist must paint as he would speak. I don’t want people to speculate what I mean, I want them to understand.”
On Wednesday, the weather improves and we head west to the black sand beaches of Karekare and Piha to walk and explore. Karekare in the Waitakere Rangers, is famous as the setting for the rather grim film ‘The Piano’. Standing on the deserted beach in the chill wind, looking back at the looming forest-covered mountains, one can admire the choice. It’s a bleak and forbidding landscape and there’s something rather alien about all that black sand and rock.
As we retrace our steps to the carpark, we’re startled by a tiny feisty bird who runs at us, beak jabbing aggressively. We realise that we must be near its nest but can’t immediately see where that could be. Surely this pale cream bird doesn’t bury its eggs in all this black sand? That would constitute a serious evolutionary error. We look around in search of some gentle place where it might comfortably raise its young and decide it must have travelled some distance just to tick us off. But we have no desire to stay on the beach anyway and, as we tramp back to the car, I completely sympathise with the mute, dislocated Ada McGrath.
