Ralph Hotere 'Lo Negro Sobre Lo oro'

No artist in this country has worked as single-mindedly and extrapolated as much from as limited and demanding means as Ralph Hotere. As David Eggleton has observed, seemingly everything the artist touches turns to black. It begins to predominate in the artist’s work in the early 1960s and it remains the defining aesthetic here, in this late, great work from the transcendent series which bears the same name, Lo Negro Sobre Lo Oro (1997–1999). Rich in history and metaphor, black summons thoughts of race, politics, science, philosophy, fear, morality, the unseen and the infinite. Gold is, of course, a similarly loaded media choice.

Hotere perhaps first interrogates and mines darkness most successfully in the late 1960s and early 1970s with his ‘Black Paintings’. Reductive, minimal and austere, this body of work was abstract in the purest sense of the word, offering viewers little or no reference outside of their self-contained, hermetic worlds of darkness. Much of his work after this can be seen as a reaction against this body of work, as his art increasingly becomes more social, political and environmental, whilst beauty, fecundity and fragility remain touchstones throughout.

Brought up in the far north in a devout Roman Catholic family, Ralph Hotere’s art has always been informed by the theology, liturgy, sacramentalism and iconography of the church. This continues to inform his work here. The artist visited Spain in the early 1960s and returned several times subsequently. His work here shares much with the legacy of Spanish Tenebrism in its dark and
dramatic, innate religiosity. Hotere’s use of vernacular building materials became an increasingly essential part of his practice from the 1980s and it marks him as one of our most innovative and original artists. From corrugated iron and lead head nails to villa windows and fluorescent lights, his works call into question our assumptions of art and the manner in which we engage with it.
The use of gold in Lo Negro Sobre Lo Oro recalls the rich altars of Spanish cathedrals and provides the most gorgeous of contrasts with the inky and enveloping darkness. Unusually here, the artist paints the sash window black and strips it of its utilitarian fixings providing the viewer with no distractions from the world beyond the frame.