The Chris Booth Collection

The Chris Booth Collection

Featured in Important Paintings & Contemporary Art | Tuesday 15 August 2023

Chris Booth works closely with the land and indigenous peoples of the regions in which he creates his monumental artworks. His manner of working emphasises research, communication and exchange between indigenous and colonial cultures and the creation of meaningful environmental sculpture. His works manifest a deep concern with the way the development of European society has altered the land and spirituality of Aotearoa and how we continue to degrade our natural environment.

You’ll seldom encounter his work in an auction catalogue or a dealer gallery, yet he is one of our most internationally recognised artists who is responsible for some of our most enduring and recognisable sculpture. Esteemed British art writer Edwards Lucie-Smith has called him a ‘poet of the natural world’. As climate change continues to impact our lives and affect all things, Booth’s art encourages us to protect both the communities and ecosystems upon which we depend.

Awarded the 1982 Frances Hodgkins Fellowship and subsequently based in Dunedin for a year, Booth became close friends with Ralph Hotere and Hone Tuwhare, both also Northland born, describing their friendship as that of ‘Tai Tokerau kindred spirits’. Hotere and Booth shared strong environmental concerns, and both then were making work directly opposing the proposed aluminium smelter at Aramoana.

Hotere took the younger artist under his wing, mentoring him and providing the first opportunity for Booth to work on the kind of scale which he craved and which his vision warranted. Prior to this opportunity, Booth had essentially been making maquettes for nearly fifteen years, never having had the space or resources to build a large-scale sculpture. Booth also assisted Hotere in the studio at this time, adapting window frames for his new work.

Entitled Aramoana (1982), Booth recalled the creative process and highlighted the collaborative nature and shared kinship: “Following Ralph’s invitation to build the sculpture on his land, I set about collecting the materials.... Ralph and I retrieved the kanuka poles from behind Sawyers Bay with his Land Rover... Shells, bones and other symbols of life were collected from Aramoana, Karitane and the beaches of the peninsula... Other symbols came from my home area (Kerikeri) and from Ralph’s home area (Mitimiti). A small shard and stone even came from Lake Mungo in Australia – a place where 45 000-year-old Aboriginal remains have been found, a place that was dear to Ralph and, later, to me... The four or five months it took to build the structure were some of the most important times in my development as a sculptor... Once it was completed Ralph named the sculpture Aramoana.” The sculpture was installed on Hotere’s property at Observation Point in Port Chalmers.

Like Booth’s Aramoana sculpture itself, the works in this catalogue from the collection of Chris Booth, stand as a testament to an enduring friendship and love of the natural environment, resonating with a unique creative vision and a shared response to the threat of environmental damage.

Ben Plumbly