Greer Twiss the ‘Godfather' of contemporary New Zealand sculpture: Laura Vodanovich
Sculptor Greer Twiss died earlier this month. Photo / Greg Bowker
While I was working at Auckland Museum, a project initiated by Outdoor Sculpture 2001, and supported by the Edmiston Trust, installed sculptures throughout the Auckland Domain.
Marquette's of these sculptures, including Twiss's work among other significant names in the artworld, were displayed at Auckland Museum in 2004. Some magnificent and striking sculptures were created as part of this initiative, but it was Twiss' work Grafting, that was my very favourite.
Grafting is a series of 10 sculptures in the fernery, part of the Wintergardens in the Auckland Domain. These works include nine native birds and a pear tree, each complete with a label typical of those used on specimens you might find in a museum.
The individual labels include the Latin, te reo Māori and English 'common' name for each bird, but for the tree just the word pear along with Twiss's signature.
Woven through this work you can detect his interest in the colonial period through his use of three forms of classification identifying each native bird. For the pear tree, introduced to Aotearoa by missionary Samuel Marsden, Twiss dispenses with the three names and strips this specimen to just the one common name, pear.
His exploration of the colonial period and the 'dialogue between the natural situation and the imposed brought into the situation' has seen him create a number of works on this theme.
In 2020 his agent, Jane Sanders, reached out to us to say Twiss would like to offer a work to the Hawke's Bay Museums Trust Tai Ahuriri collection and we were delighted to accept his generous offer.
The work, Hobson's Baggage, 1995, is another sculpture exploring the colonial theme.
Toni MacKinnon, art curator at the time, wrote that 'Greer Twiss' sculpture brings objects together in unexpected ways… Queen Victoria is loaded into an old suitcase, there is a flag that has no way of fitting into the case, and a watering can! And what is the little lamp about?'
Twiss of course made sense of this, pondering what Hobson might have bought in his luggage including, possibly, a bust of Queen Victoria.
In his eyes the items all represent something including authority, cultivation and the law.
It is a wonderful work to have in our collection and another way in which Twiss has positively influenced my personal relationship with artworks in Aotearoa.
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This presentation set, made by A Kohn Ltd, was gifted to Prime Minister Gordon Coates at the foundation stone ceremony and is on display at the museum. Photo / Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira Intriguingly, a time capsule was placed into a cavity cut into the foundation stone, sealed inside a bronze casket. Its contents, however, are disappointingly dour: a copy of the Archdeacon's prayer, a list of subscribers to the museum's building fund, a history of Auckland and the daily newspapers. Auckland Museum's chief executive, David Reeves, has been fascinated by the stories that have emerged from the archives. He sees the foundation stone ceremony as a symbolic moment when the city came of age. 'The fervour around it was part of Auckland's civic pride, that we could build something of this stature. So it was an expression of confidence in ourselves,' he says. 'Thinking back to that era and the enormous grief in the community after World War I, there wouldn't have been a family that wasn't affected in some way, having either lost somebody or having a damaged soldier come back to them. 'The laying of the foundation stone would have been that moment of saying, yes, we're acknowledging that. We're getting on with our lives, but we're not going to forget. So it was literally a concrete way to make a permanent mark that the Great War, as it was then known, would not be forgotten.' The Anzac Day dawn service at the Cenotaph each year marks the dual role performed by the Auckland War Memorial Museum. Photo / Hayden Woodward The museum faces a challenging four years before marking its official centenary in 2029. The recent detection of asbestos at the site of previous remediation work in the 80s – and the wider spread of asbestos dust – has led to the indefinite closure of the Te Marae Atea Māori Court and the Pacific galleries. 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