It is the most racist, derogatory, dishonest, divisive and ignorant thing I’ve ever seen in a gallery. –Waikanae resident in an e-mail to us
By Roger Childs
Robyn Kahukiwa is an Australian born, part-Maori artist who was incensed about government funding for the 250th celebrations of the 1769 arrival of Captain Cook in New Zealand waters. Her exhibition “Let’s NOT celebrate Cook” is a visual expression of her views on the matter and is featuring at the Mahara Gallery until 12 April.
Artistic licence is to be expected of painters and cartoonists, but they should not falsify history and make up stories to suit their art. Unfortunately, Kahukiwa gets the history and consequences of Captain Cook’s visits to New Zealand deliberately wrong to suit her prejudiced views.
Telling lies
THEN COOK SHOT 9 MAORI
THEY FELL DEAD IN THE SAND
JUST ‘COS THE CROWN DID WANT
SOME NEW LANDS.
This is part of a longer poem in a painting and is utterly dishonest on a number of counts:
- Cook personally shot nobody.
- Only one native died on the sand at Poverty Bay.
- All the deaths there resulted after attempts by the natives to steal things or because of their aggressive behaviour which led to fighting with sailors.
- Britain didn’t want new colonies – there was no attempt to invade or take over New Zealand during the following 60 years.
Another painting states that there should be no celebration because Cook was a “British Invader, Thief, Murderer, Kidnapper, Rapist.” There is no evidence that he was any of these things and in fact, as he was instructed to do, he was at pains to try and establish good relations with the native peoples of the Pacific. There were some misunderstandings over property and ownership leading to violence, but using weapons against natives was only ever in self-defence.
Free expression
Robyn Kahukiwa is, or should be, entitled to her views, but one wonders about the Mahara Gallery featuring her artwork about Captain Cook. Furthermore, having Mayor Guru actually open this and another exhibition gives it a measure of official council endorsement. But does the Mayor actually accept Kahukiwa’s twisted view of history?
If you haven’t done so, go see it for yourself and draw your own conclusions. Comments are welcome.
The European heritage, whenever and wherever in the world, is regarded as fair game for shooting down, and facts do not enter into it. James Cook, a working class lad made good by his own bravery and intelligence is what we can’t hear about.
If the folk heroes of any other race were disparaged like this hell would be raised. It might be said, for example, that Martin Luther King was a whore-monger, adulterer, pervert, lackey of Nelson Rockefeller, and had his thinking done for him by Stanley Levinson of the Communist Party, but let’s not go there. Or that Te Whiti was a psychotic nutter of the Jim Jones variety. Or that Nelson Mandela was a bitch for global capitalism.
This disparaging of any vestige of the settler heritage obscures the conditions from which settler folk were trying to escape which prevailed in Britain, described by Engel’s in The Condition of the Working Class in England, and by Carlyle in Past & Present.
As for the actual history of New Zealand which is conveniently obscured by anti-white obsessions, a few minutes reading of Rex Fairburn’s poem ‘Dominion’; would do better than any number of history classes offered, whether by secondary or tertiary education.
Kahukiwa surely has a very shallow sense of heritage if she cannot honour it without disparaging others.
Roger allows Robyn Kahukiwa to be entitled to her views, but the implication is that the Mahara Gallery should not exhibit them because artwork should not falsify history and make up stories.
If this is the standard that art should adhere to, many of the world’s artwork, including Titan’s mythological stories, the Renaissance painters’ religious portrayals, and military art from the middle of the 19th century, would never have been shown in art galleries. Should the same standards apply to publishers of other art forms such as novels, plays and films?
Art is not an historical treatise, it is a personal view or interpretation of a subject, and should be appreciated as such.