Feature
The art of being Gore
by Sally Blundell
When you think of the art capitals of New Zealand, you don’t necessarily think of Southland, but that’s a mistake. With the recent arrival of a significant series of works by Ralph Hotere – to add to its already substantial collection of regional art – Gore is staking its claim as a must-see destination
What is it about Gore? Fish by the bucketload (the Mataura River is home to hordes of brown trout), country music (every June the population of just over 10,000 is bumped up by thousands arriving for the annual New Zealand Gold Guitar Awards) and now art.
Art. Ralph Hotere has given the Eastern Southland Gallery 36 lithographs. To keep. Forever. And, because of the gallery’s commitment to having New Zealand’s only permanent room dedicated to the works of Ralph Hotere – with particular emphasis on those works done in collaboration with writers, poets and dramatists – other people are giving, or promising to give, their Hotere works to the gallery. The collection of Hone Tuwhare, who lives just outside Gore, is in the care of the gallery. In its distribution of works of art, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade gave the Eastern Southland 10 works, including two of the banners from the Song Cycle performance event in which Hotere worked with composer Jack Body, pianist Barry Margan, poet Bill Manhire and choreographer John Casserley.
Why Gore? Particularly when Ralph Hotere has long been a Dunedin artist.
“It’s a really nice town, a nice place for artists to hang out, to do some work. And the fishing is great. It’s really nice that Ralph has thought this is a good place for his work to be,” says Jim Geddes, Gore born and bred, graduate of the Otago School of Art, founder and director of the town’s Eastern Southland Gallery. He is amiable, laid-back and somehow familiar. A down-to-earth kinda guy.
For 17 years the gallery has hosted performances, workshops, travelling shows, visiting-artist programmes – filling the brief of community gallery with aplomb. “We’ve been building up the infrastructure,” says Geddes. “It’s just something we’ve always been conscious of, that this isn’t a static exhibition space – now we’ve just got a lot more resources.”
A lot more resources. In 1999, expat Dr John Money, pioneering researcher into the science of human sexuality, donated his substantial collection of 20th-century New Zealand art, including works by Theo Schoon and Rita Angus, contemporary US paintings and lithographs and indigenous sculptures from African and Aboriginal societies to the Eastern Southland Gallery. With funding from the community and $480,000 from the New Zealand Government and Lottery Board, a new $1.1 million John Money Wing is being built to house this valuable collection and other works – including a permanent overview of the works of Ralph Hotere.
Again, why Gore?
“Jim is a one-off,” says Dunedin gallery owner Marshall Seifert. “He’s a person who hasn’t stepped off the path from day one in his job in Southland. He’s like a country aesthete.”
A long vision and a commitment to local art – it may sound like the wording of any provincial gallery’s brief, but the kind of acclaim that the Eastern Southland is getting shows that Geddes’s idea of how a gallery should work is not widespread.
“Jim’s a fantastic guy,” says Frans Baetens, director of Auckland’s print-making Muka Studio and the popular no-adults-allowed travelling Youth Print Exhibitions, who has just gifted the lithographic presses and Muka operation to the Eastern Southland Gallery.
“There are a lot of people in the arts world who are director of a museum in one place, then in another, always as part of a career development. But Jim, he comes from Gore and he works for Gore, he’s determined to stay local. Like others in Oamaru and Ashburton, he’s working to bring contemporary art within reach of smaller communities.”
At the time, the Dunedin Public Art Gallery (DPAG) had no idea that the Hotere works were heading to Gore, but director Priscilla Pitts gives her support to Geddes.
“Jim is someone with that kind of vision to make things happen and someone who has been able to generate that support – and good luck to him.”
Certainly, Hotere has given away many works in his time, and his links with Gore go back a long way. But isn’t this also a slight? An artist voting with his feet against the local city gallery and what Otago artist Grahame Sydney describes as the DPAG’s lack of commitment to its region’s art that stretches back over several decades and is driven in part by the lack of a “decent purchasing budget”?
Pitts argues that the DPAG does have an “active” programme of local artists. But the regionalist focus, she says, is simply not relevant.
“That debate is becoming incredibly over-simplistic and has degenerated to levels not particularly intelligent or realistic. You can’t expect every gallery to be doing the same job – we’re not there trying to be regional clones, and from the outset this gallery wasn’t intended to be a regionally focused gallery. We have a very good relationship with Ralph and I don’t have any concern about this at all. I don’t feel we have been undermined at all.”
Not a loss for the people of Dunedin?
“I would like to see more of Ralph’s work in the gallery – we would be very happy to have more, but c’est la vie. The Eastern Southland is not that far away if we want to borrow works. We need to look at other people's collections as resources – there is a more collegial approach now between most galleries.”
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