Ralph Hotere ‘Vive Aramoana’

The drive from Ralph Hotere’s studio on the hill at Observation Point in Port Chalmers to Aramoana takes around fifteen minutes. You wind your way through small bays alongside the Otago Harbour, including the artist’s home town of Carey’s Bay, out to the tip of the harbour to the small seaside settlement of Aramoana. With no shops or streetlights it can be an eerie place which has had more than its fair share of tragedy over the years, yet its rugged, quiet beauty remains unique and unforgettable. The spectre of a proposed aluminium smelter at the sleepy beach loomed large over the local community for nearly ten years until 1982 when its deep unpopularity finally witnessed the government abandon its plans. At the centre of the opposition to the smelter was Ralph Hotere, tackling the potential environmental rape of his beloved local landscape with a body of work so beautiful, raw and powerful that they constitute some of the finest works in his distinguished and prolific career, and in New Zealand art of the twentieth century. The artist’s inclusion in Phaidon’s 20th Century Art Book late last century, alongside 499 other illustrious figures, including Colin McCahon, reinforced his status as an international heavyweight, whose best work could sit comfortably alongside that of anyone in the world.

Aramoana translates to ‘pathway to the sea’ and looking northwards from his studio where this work was painted, Hotere’s view towards the fragile Aramoana sand spit and salt marsh was unimpeded. His was a constant view Towards Aramoana, as many works from the series are entitled. Though this painting and the series overtly reference this particular landscape, they are not really landscape paintings as such. Rather, they are protest paintings and visual statements of defiance.

Long Live Aramoana! Vive Aramoana was painted over two years and finished in the year plans for the proposed smelter were finally abandoned. The work represents a celebration and is among the finest works from the series. With its crosses, dates and numerals built up and then partially erased it captures much of the rage the artist felt at the time. The surge of expression around the stencilled letters and numerals can be seen to represent the toxic waste that a smelter would have released into the harbour, the blood of the wounded land.

Hotere inserts his brooding protest landscape into the ubiquitous New Zealand colonial villa window frame. In doing so he calls into question the manner in which we engage with both works of art and with our changing landscape, questioning the very relevance of art in a time of crisis and its ability to bring about social change.

Vive Aramoana is an elegant visual metaphor for the beauty and fragility of our local environment. Brooding, angry, but ultimately celebratory, it counters the threat of deep ecological and visual damage to the local region with unmistakable beauty and fecundity.

Ben Plumbly