Ralph Hotere ‘Blue Gums… and daisies falling’

In 1989 Ralph Hotere began his Oputae, Blue Gums and Daisies Falling series (1989–1993) in protest against Port Otago’s scheme to carve away half of the hill at Observation Point (Flagstaff Hill) above Port Chalmers where he had his studio. The company wanted to create extra flat land at the bottom of the site to aggregate and marshall Pinus radiata logs from Dunedin City Forests ahead of shipping them out from the deep-water port. Having purchased a cottage on top of the hill at 2 Aurora Terrace in 1970, at the end of his Frances Hodgkins Fellowship year at the University of Otago, Hotere had a long association with the hill. His former studio is now a Category 1 Historic Place listed by Heritage New Zealand. It is where he had created many iconic works and also married his first wife Cilla McQueen, author of the poem “Daisies Falling”.

Hotere was so incensed about Port Otago’s intentions that in September 1989 he flew to Wellington to try and persuade the Minister of Conservation, Philip Woollaston, to put a stop to the plan. The Otago Daily Times quotes him as saying “This is a sacred spot. It has historic connections with early Otago. It’s an ancient urupa, and ancient living, dwelling place. And it should never be devastated. They can put their wharves up in town. They don’t need to devastate the hill, to change the landscape, you know?” In 1988, Hotere had formed the Society for the Protection of Observation Point (P.R.O.P.) to fight the decision, making and selling art works to fund the costs of the legal battle ahead, often directly referencing the plan to demolish the hill, as this one does.

Many of the works in the series were made used a blowtorch on corrugated stainless steel or “baby iron” but this painting is on raw unstretched canvas, with the image of the profile of Oputae or Observation Point scumbled on in brown and black, with a line of red dots and the capital letters “CUT” indicating the area of land to be removed. “KOPUTAI” (the Māori name for Port Chalmers) appears perpendicular to the other text, lettered up the right side above the inscription of the title, signature and date details. A sprinkle of white suggests the fall of the shasta daisies which characterised the garden outside the studio, symbolic of the colonial history of the site. Above, at the top of the canvas, is a thin, dark line indicating a spit of dark sand with a ghostly text “ARAMOANA” recalling the earlier successful Save Aramoana environmental campaign which opposed the building of an aluminium smelter on a nearby important bird nesting area named by Māori as “Pathway to the Sea”.

Hotere often wrote Māori placenames into his work, raising awareness of the long pre-European occupation of the places he was referring to. He knew that Oputae had been occupied since the 12th century by Araite Uru Murihiku, and that it was the site of a kāinga nohoanga, urupā and wāhi tapu. It was also the location of the signing of Otago Deed between 25 Māori chiefs and representatives of the New Zealand Company on 31 July 1844. Hotere also notes the importance of blue gums in the area – the tallest tree in New Zealand is the eucalyptus at the Orokonui ecosanctuary just up the Otago coast.

By 1993, when forestry exports had increased six-fold and pressure on Hotere to sell became irresistible, he finally gave in to Port Otago, and his second studio was immediately demolished. A small area of land accessed from Aurora Terrace was converted in 2005 by the Hotere Foundation Trust with the assistance of the Otago Harbour Board into the Hotere Garden Oputae. Sited there are Hotere’s Black Phoenix II and other art works previously displayed at Hotere’s studio by Russell Moses, Shona Rapira Davies and Chris Booth.

Linda Tyler