Colin McCahon in Auckland
An in-depth exhibition of Colin McCahon’s work focuses on his connection with Auckland and marks the centenary of his birth. Auckland Art Gallery curator Ron Brownson discusses the survey of one of New Zealand’s foremost artists.
Auckland Art Gallery curator Ron Brownson on the exhibition
There are 25 key paintings from the gallery’s collection and from private collections. What can we expect to see?
The exhibition is divided into three sections – 1950s, 1960s and 1970s – with a very focused sampling to give you a sense of McCahon’s major contribution to Auckland art. He came here in 1953 and spent the majority of his life here, so the exhibition really has to do with the works he painted between 1953 and the end of his career, around 1987. A number of the works are very large, or long and multipart – diptychs and triptychs – and others have more elements. It will feel very rich, but intimate at the same time.
Tell us about some of the rarely seen works.
In the 1950s section, we have a work from the University of Auckland Student Association collection called ‘Let us Possess One World’, with the phrase ‘each has one, and is one’. There’s very much a prescient quality to the work – 60 years on, the written message communicates something very meaningful to us today. Another work from the 50s is ‘Painting’ (1958), which is an incredible piece that won the Hay’s Prize. You look at it 61 years later and it is every bit as challenging now. You get a taste of what McCahon was involved with – he was painting about global concerns and the realities of a time when there was a great threat about nuclear war, while other paintings have to do with flight above the Manukau Harbour. All these works are in conversation with each other in the room. We spent a lot of time making sure this exhibition gives you a sense of the key concerns of those three decades.
The exhibition coincides with the centenary of McCahon’s birth. Did other reasons prompt a retrospective?
The last large McCahon show was in 2002 – there are people under 40 who may have never seen a show at all. What I find amazing about McCahon is that his finest works still have the power to speak to us with astonishing and unforgettable intensity. The big questions are always the big questions, and many of the big questions stay with us. What do we believe in?
What can we know about where we live? How can we care for where we live? Audiences of art are now so unbelievably visually knowledgeable that when they look at McCahon’s work they are going to find it absolutely intriguing, memorable and stimulating. When he was alive, people said it was going to take time to catch up with his way of seeing. Well, I think we have caught up.
This is the first public showing, as an artwork, of painted windows that McCahon completed in 1965 for the Convent Chapel of the Sisters of our Lady of the Missions in Remuera. Could you explain their significance?
The work came into the gallery’s collection in 1989, two years after Colin McCahon died. It was his first religious commission. The architect James Hackshaw commissioned Colin to paint the windows in the north, south, east and west clerestories. They took McCahon a year to complete – some work was done in-situ, and some from his Elam studio. McCahon’s interpretation is as if the Stations of the Cross are occurring here in Auckland across our volcanic topography. It’s like a cross-section of the isthmus of Auckland – a painting as a meditation. This was at the time when the Vatican Council was leading towards renewal of the Roman Catholic Church. They were interested in the notion of artworks being able to complement lessons, learnings and meditations of faith. Archbishop James Liston and director of missions Dr Reginald Delargy had very rigorous and vigorous conversations with McCahon about how traditional Roman Catholic symbols could be included in a chapel dedicated to prayer and meditation.
McCahon worked at Auckland Art Gallery for almost a decade. Can you explain how is this explored in the exhibition?
The adjunct exhibition From the Archive: Colin McCahon in Auckland is based around photographs, ephemera and publications from his time at the gallery. McCahon taught painting here, promoted acquisitions and was a brilliant curator, and this is not well known.