The wonderful world of collections
Mark Amery
One of my favourite lockdowncreated online treats is Jo Randerson’s Things at Home . In this video series, viewable on Vimeo, the Wellington writer and theatre maker (whose new play Every Mammal opens today at Circa) is unseen but for her hands at a small table, introducing her impressive kooky ornament collection – episodes range from ‘Owls’ to ‘Driftwood Googlies’.
A collection of anything is a wonder. Something special happens when they’re made public. Collections aren’t just about the objects, they’re about the people and stories behind them.
Alexander Turnbull (1868-1918) collected books (55,000 of them), artwork and artefacts – now housed in the National Library (his ethnographic collection is with Te Papa). To that library thousands of other collectors have contributed.
Alexander Turnbull Library Chief Librarian Chris Szekely says the collection holds items ‘‘too many millions to count’’. Alone, there are 5 million photographs and 140,000 drawings, paintings and prints. Plus many delightful oddities – this week I marvelled at buttons created by French prisoners on St Helena two centuries ago.
Superb work has been done providing access to the collections online, yet exhibitions provide the physical frisson of carefully selected, positioned and explained objects in space. Online a search on ‘buttons’ brings up a boggling 3374 items.
Welcome then is Mı¯haro Wonder, an impressive exhibition celebrating 100 years of the collection. With 170 items a principal aim is to give a sense of its incredible scope. Yet, as beautifully written wall labels bear out, it’s the exhibition’s humanity – the poetry in perception offered on what’s presented – that really highlights the value of experienced curators. Peter Ireland and Fiona Oliver curate with intelligence, wit and care for the stories behind the objects, with poignant details in the labels.
There is the wonder of wondering, the wonder of the creative act of capturing the world, and the wonder of extraordinary
objects: a wide-eyed Ans Westra catching her reflection in a mirror with her Roleflex in 1964; an 1844 doodle by Walter Mantell combining maunga, the view from O¯ taki beach, and the faces of Ma¯ ori and Pa¯ keha¯ , as the label puts it, ‘‘like reflections in the water’’; or James Meek’s enormous 1876 drawing in which he writes the history of New Zealand, as he saw it, into the trunk of a kauri tree.
In type and scale works often differ from the art gallery – take a delicate 1853 oil by Charles Heaphy of a female shooting party, half the size of a postcard. Equally, like some personal essay, Mı¯haro revels in
Where and when
M¯ıharo Wonder: 100 Years of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library Gallery, until October 2
conceptual links which have fun visual juxtapositions across time: a gorgeous wee 1975 work by British painter Patrick Hayman of A View of Mount Egmont from South London, is paired with a recent photograph by a Briton resident in Wellington, Andy Spain, of a man in a Wellington Ethiopian cafe.
‘‘Anything whatever relating to this Colony …’’ wrote Turnbull, ‘‘will be fish for my net.’’ That’s made visual with an elegant large commissioned sculptural work by Matthew McIntyre-Wilson, He Mahi Kupenga. The kupenga is the fishing net and these balloon out dynamically like pitcher plants, or a cluster of giant old gramophone horns, collecting and broadcasting. Suspended from anchor stones they’re like light antennae picking up signals in the air. Beautifully made, materials, knots and forms extend on research into traditional knowledge. This work emphasises the research aspect of the artist’s role and libraries’ role in it. It visualises the way they collect wide and then refine.
Loss permeates the exhibition, in particular that for Ma¯ ori – the other side of collection is plunder. Poignantly, the first work in the exhibition is an inscribed slab from c.879 BC in which King Ashurnasirpal II of Assyria’s palace is described as featuring ‘‘the spoil of my hand from the lands which I conquered’’.
Further in, a particularly strong wall of images focuses on unease in race relations and the colonial power play made through art: James Barry’s terrific 1820 painting of the uneasy trio Thomas Kendall, and chiefs Hongi and Waikato; Theo Schoon’s copy of a cave drawing; Phil Reid’s photograph of a beheaded John Ballance sculpture with a pumpkin placed as head, with a girl below quietly plaiting flax.
Mı¯haro has an excellent online gallery – but why not more of the collection on display? Until 2009 the then library gallery ran an energetic, remarkable exhibition programme where the cafe is now, changing anything from monthly to quarterly. It was one of the most exciting cultural spaces in town. My impression is exhibition frequency has reduced since the 2021 library redesign.
The ground floor Mı¯haro space is used for exhibitions of length, there is the Te Puna Foundation Gallery (currently showing Barry Clothier images), and a small gallery upstairs has excellent occasional shows. Sadly as I walk by it is empty.