Spiral and beyond

'Spiral and beyond: Art and feminism in New Zealand' was a retrospective exhibition curated by Dr Judith Collard between 14 June - 10 August 2002. Here's a description in her words:

1975 was the United Nations International Women's Year. To mark the event, Allie Eagle, then Mitchell, curated a special show of ‘6 Women Artists'. It was held at the Robert McDougall Gallery in Christchurch. It was the first exhibition to be organized on feminist principles and focusing on ideas about identity. Eagle had belonged to a collective of women artists and writers based in Christchurch who then went on to found the influential journal Spiral, that published poems, essays and art. This network of women shared ideas, journals and books, including the writings of such theorists as Lucy Lippard and artists like the U.S artists Judy Chicago and Mary Beth Edelson, whose work is included in the exhibition.
Gradually these women made contact with others of like-mind around New Zealand and organized exhibitions and events such as the 1977 A Seasons Diaries, organized by Joanna Paul, which brought together both professional and non-professional artists, as well as those who had never been involved in art-making before. In 1977 the Women's Artists Group also organized the Women's Art Environment at the Canterbury Society of the Arts. In 1980 the Women's Gallery was founded in Wellington by a collective that included Marian Evans, Anna Keir, Bridie Lonie, Rosemary Johnson and others.
This exhibition is a sampler, providing but a taste of the variety of women artists who were inspired by feminism to shake up the attitudes of the New Zealand art world, who thought that the work of women was worth celebrating and who broadened the approved subject matter of art.

Retrieved from http://www.otago.ac.nz/library/hocken/exhibitions/otago039145.html 9 November 2015

Some images of works included in the exhibition:

 Allie Eagle This woman died, I care 1978 

watercolour, pastel and graphite, 720 x 540 mm 

Inscription: (l.r.) "Allie Eagle Feb'78"; "THIS WOMAN DIED, I CARE DIED TRYING TO ABORT HERSELF" 

Credit Line:Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, purchased 1993 

Accession No:1993/19

(couldn't find a credit)

Sharon Alston 1986? photographer unknown (ahem! – maybe Adrienne Martyn?) – from A Women’s Picture Book: Twenty-Five Women Artists of Aotearoa New Zealand eds Evans, Lonie, Lloyd (1988)

Judith Collard has also written: 'Spiral Women: Locating Lesbian Activism in New Zealand Feminist Art', 1975-1992 in the Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 15, No. 2 (May, 2006), pp. 292-320. Published by: University of Texas Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4629655

Might be worth a read, does anyone have access to Jstor??

Canterbury Regionalists, in search of identity

Rata Lovell-Smith, Hawkins, 1933
Oil on canvas board, 345 x 460mm
Collection of the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu, purchased, 1981

Rita Angus, Cass,  1936

oil on canvas on board, 370 x 460 mm

Collection of the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu, purchased 1955

Whilst in Christchurch I visited the Art Gallery to see some of the works that constitute New Zealand Regionalism, which focused on depicting the landscape of Canterbury and Otago in a realist manner. Typically the Regionalists (eg., Rita Angus, and Rata Lovell-Smith) were pre-modernist and opposed to the modernist shift to European abstraction and to American abstract expressionism. 

The regionalists depicted the landscape without people, using buildings as the stand-in for the signs of human inhabitation. An example is WA Sutton, a Christchurch-based painter who taught at the very conservative University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts. This art school in the 1950s was resolutely committed to representational painting and encouraged accurate drawing rather than experimentation. 

The Canterbury regionalists rejected the romantic traditions of scenic grandeur (including the sublime) and they developed a distinctive imagery focused on marks of settlement and physical features that typified the region. 

Rata's representation of the Canterbury landscape in paintings such as 'Hawkins' (1933) and 'Bridge, Mt Cook Road' (1934) influenced later artists, including Rita Angus and William Sutton. This regionalism showed an interest in subjects that were characteristic of the localities with which the painters were most familiar. The Canterbury School was a regionalist movement which expressed a growing awareness of a local identity and harboured aspirations for a distinctive New Zealand art. 

Today, its the regional difference that stands out in a globalised world and international tourism. 

Excerpted from the opinionated art/photography blog junkforcode by Gary Sauer Thompson in 'NZ Realism / Regionalism,' April 9 2009, http://www.sauer-thompson.com/junkforcode/archives/2009/04/, accessed 3 November 2009. Check out the other posts on Peter Peryer's bloated cow and Anne Shelton's Doublet (I could not bring myself to make another Parker Hulme post!!). 

And from the more historically accurate NZHistory's 'History of New Zealand Painting: Regionalism':

In the 1930s and 1940s a distinctly New Zealand style of painting began to emerge. At this time there was an increasing demand by critics like James Shelley (1884–1961) and A.R.D. Fairburn (1904–57) for painters to pay greater attention to local subjects. What developed was a New Zealand style of regionalism that is characterised by a preoccupation with place and local identity. The centre of regionalist painting in this country was Christchurch, with pupils and teachers at the Canterbury College School of Art the main exponents. 

[...]

Regionalism in New Zealand was not such a formal doctrine. Artists tended to approach the landscape with a diversity of styles and a range of interests. They dealt with themes of isolation and loneliness, and celebrated rural life and the virtues of honest work. Another aspect often remarked upon in these works is the crisp, clearly defined forms and stark contrast between light and dark. This is attributed to an artist’s response to the harsh qualities of the New Zealand light as championed by Christopher Perkins. 

The regionalist style can be characterised by a number of features: flattened forms, strong outlines, broad areas of flat colour, and a decorative treatment of form and space. The depiction of unpopulated landscapes with motifs to signify settlement is also typical of this period.

'A new New Zealand art', URL: http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/culture/nz-painting-history/a-new-new-zealand-art, (Ministry for Culture and Heritage), updated 20-Dec-2012. Accessed 3 November 2015.

Women in the tepee space

The Women's Art Environment, CSA Gallery, Christchurch : women in the tepee space.
[1977]

1 photograph : b&w ; 11 x 16 cm.

Notes:

Exhibition, 30 May-9 June 1977

1178

In 1977 the Women's Artists Group organized the Women's Art Environment at the Canterbury Society of Arts. The artists exhibiting included Joanna Paul and Allie Eagle. "The event was conceived as an opportunity for women to come together in one place to discover their particular identity as women, in a situation where their expression would be uninhibited by men. The exhibition was opened exclusively to women for the first five days ... The objects which remained on display after this were evidence of the deeply felt need of the participants to search for the sources of their identities as women"--The Press, 11 June 1977, p. 22

PhotoCD 7, IMG0037

Spiral, no. 3, 1978, p. 27   

[Copyright Christchurch Libraries]

Retrieved from http://christchurchcitylibraries.com/Heritage/Photos/Disc7/IMG0037.asp 3 November 2015

Spiral and beyond: Art and feminism in New Zealand

14 June - 10 August 2002, Hocken Library, cnr Anzac Avenue & Parry Street, Dunedin

1975 was the United Nations International Women's Year. To mark the event, Allie Eagle, then Mitchell, curated a special show of ‘6 Women Artists'. It was held at the Robert McDougall Gallery in Christchurch. It was the first exhibition to be organized on feminist principles and focusing on ideas about identity. Eagle had belonged to a collective of women artists and writers based in Christchurch who then went on to found the influential journal Spiral, that published poems, essays and art. This network of women shared ideas, journals and books, including the writings of such theorists as Lucy Lippard and artists like the U.S artists Judy Chicago and Mary Beth Edelson, whose work is included in the exhibition.
Gradually these women made contact with others of like-mind around New Zealand and organized exhibitions and events such as the 1977 A Seasons Diaries, organized by Joanna Paul, which brought together both professional and non-professional artists, as well as those who had never been involved in art-making before. In 1977 the Women's Artists Group also organized the Women's Art Environment at the Canterbury Society of the Arts. In 1980 the Women's Gallery was founded in Wellington by a collective that included Marian Evans, Anna Keir, Bridie Lonie, Rosemary Johnson and others.
This exhibition is a sampler, providing but a taste of the variety of women artists who were inspired by feminism to shake up the attitudes of the New Zealand art world, who thought that the work of women was worth celebrating and who broadened the approved subject matter of art.

Curated by Dr Judith Collard (Otago University Art History and Theory Department)

Retrieved from http://www.otago.ac.nz/library/hocken/exhibitions/otago039145.html 9 November 2015

Collard, J. (2006). Spiral women: Locating lesbian activism in New Zealand feminist art, 1975-1992.Journal of the History of Sexuality, 15(2), 292-320. [note to self/ves - look this up]

Postcards continue...