‘Please Walk On Me' – Flag Artwork Sparks Outrage Again
An artistic invitation to 'please walk' on the New Zealand flag is continuing to offend gallery visitors 30 years after it was first displayed.
Flagging the Future is just one of several artworks currently on display at Nelson's Suter Art Gallery as part of an exhibition showcasing the multimedia works of Diane Prince, who has a long history of Māori activism.
Recreated by Prince last year, the artwork features a surveying tripod – 'a talismatic symbol of territorial conquest' by the Crown against Māori, according to the artist – made from flax stalks to symbolise Māori reclamation of their land.
However, it's the New Zealand flag stencilled with the words 'Please Walk On Me' which sits at the base of the tripod that has sparked outrage from some in Nelson.
The artwork was first displayed in Auckland in 1995 as a critique of the Bolger government's decision to put a fiscal cap on Treaty of Waitangi settlements, but outrage from some at that time resulted in the artwork's removal.
Returned and Services' Association Nelson branch president Barry Pont said his reaction to seeing the artwork was one of 'shock horror'.
'Over the years, we've fought under the New Zealand flag and to wipe your feet on it is an insult in my eyes,' he said.
'You've got to give and take a bit, but this is beyond the joke, I think… I don't mind the flag lying on the floor, but not with the wording 'wipe your feet'. That's an insult to New Zealand's flag.'
He added that legislation prohibits displaying the flag with the intention to dishonour it, and didn't think the artwork should be displayed in an art gallery that was supported by ratepayers.
Mayor Nick Smith said he personally found the artwork to be 'in bad taste' and said he and the council had received 19 complaints about it.
'I would hold the same view if an artwork encouraged people to walk on the Tino Rangatiratanga flag,' he said.
'I know others may view this art differently and that is just how art is.'
He acknowledged the Suter was independent of the council and encouraged the board and director to consider public feedback of its exhibitions, 'as it is important our art gallery enjoys broad community support'.
Exhibition curator Gina Matchitt said that Prince recognised the services of soldiers with 'reverence and compassion'.
Another artwork in the exhibition – gas masks woven from flax – even honours Prince's tīpuna (ancestors) who fought in the Land Wars and World War I.
'It's just important to really understand that there's more than one view of our flag,' Matchitt said.
'For Māori, that Union Jack symbolises land loss, language loss, culture loss… the flag actually belongs to all New Zealanders, it doesn't just belong to the RSA.'
She acknowledged that Aotearoa New Zealand's past was confronting for both Pākehā and Māori.
However, she said an art gallery was a safe way to unpack those stories and recommended people learn about local Māori history, potentially by reading Treaty settlements for their local iwi, to gain a greater understanding of how Māori were treated during colonisation.
Matchitt added that the artwork was particularly relevant in the contemporary context as the current Government attempts to 'extinguish Māori rights'.
Suter Art Gallery director Toni MacKinnon said 'Flagging the Future' was a significant piece of the country's art history.
'Its return to public view is both an act of recognition and a chance to highlight a pivotal moment in the career of Diane Prince.
'Throughout history, galleries have exhibited works that challenge conventions and provoke thought – it's part of their role in a healthy society.'
Diane Prince: Artist Activist is on display at the Suter Art Gallery until 5 October, and is being toured by Porirua's Pātaka Art + Museum.
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NZ Herald
7 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Dancing up a storm: The radical contemporary-ballet crossover of Home, Land and Sea
A collaboration between the Royal NZ Ballet, contemporary dancers and a rock icon examines themes of navigation, identity and belonging. Photo / Stephen A'Court. As he approaches his 50th birthday, choreographer Moss Te Ururangi Patterson (Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Pūkenga, Ngāti Rāhiri) is still pushing boundaries. In his latest creation, Home, Land and Sea, the artistic director of the New Zealand Dance Company is doing something that hasn't been done before in local dance: six contemporary dancers from his company join six ballet dancers from the Royal New Zealand Ballet to perform his piece. As he puts it, the choreography will be a challenge for each group, but he's excited about the potential magic. 'The New Zealand style of contemporary dance is very athletic, it's very grounded, it's very circular, and it's very bold. Ballet has quite a different aesthetic; it's elevated, it's off the ground, it's very symmetrical and has an inherent beauty to it. We are bringing two distinct styles together to realise something else. 'The unknown future is this: What if there is a middle space we've never explored, which could symbolise the next stage of dance in this country?' While dance companies can and do collaborate, it is unprecedented to bring the two nationally focused companies together, especially when they are typically rivals for ticket sales. But Patterson is friends with the RNZB artistic director, Ty King-Wall, and he hopes their collaboration is symbolic of what he'd like to see happening more in New Zealand – socially, politically, and in the arts. Says Patterson: 'It's important that we step up, we're the very best at what we can do, that we show our skill as contemporary dancers to national audiences across the country, alongside the best ballet dancers in the country.' Shayne Carter: His music for Home, Land and Sea is political. Photo / Stephen A'Court. Collaboration goes further than just the dancers. Rock musician Shayne Carter (Straitjacket Fits, Dimmer) has created a score he hopes will jolt the ballet audience. Carter describes Home, Land and Sea as a political piece. 'I'm pretty angry about where things are, about the rise of the right and the displacement of people. The political tides are eroding the land, and our sense of identity. That's a big brief to put into three musical notes.' Musically, he wants to evoke an atmosphere, to bring moments of beauty and corrosive elements to Patterson's creation. 'Everything I do creatively has to have an intent to it,' Carter says. 'In this commission, I want to have moments of beauty and the grandeur of nature, but also to reflect on the reality of where we are now. That's my inspiration, like it or lump it.' Carter has been working on various arts projects for the past decade, ever since he and Patterson collaborated on the Atamira Dance Company's Pango/Black, which told the Māori creation story. Then, Carter performed live on stage with the company as it took the work to Taiwan and China. This time he's recording the score and the themes are broader: navigation, identity, belonging and validation, all told through music and dance. The new work shares the title of the 2004 TrinityRoots album. 'They're my bros. I've known them all for years,' Patterson says. He went to school with drummer Riki Gooch and is related to bassist Rio Hemopo. Stories about navigation, from Europe and the Pacific, fascinate him, as does how these can be expressed through dance. Divided into three parts, Home will be an unyielding opening, with overtones of Māori dance, and bold movements reflecting New Zealanders today. 'We're built on a nation of hard workers, of teams of people, communities of people doing things together.' Dancers rehearse for Home, Land and Sea. Photos / Stephen A'Court Land will be more sculptural, beautiful and ethereal, as dancers move to Carter's almost ghostly, soulful guitar soundtrack. 'When I listen to the score it makes me think of a Colin McCahon or Robyn Kahukiwa painting,' says Patterson. Sea looks into the future. Movements will be intense, reflecting our rocky, turbulent world. 'It's talking about the discomfort of not knowing where we're going but trying to let little rays of light into the score to give us hope. We'll have some very beautiful, kinetic, moving tableaux. In the last section, we'll have a very physical, cyclical, circular and aerial style, some lifting, throwing, lots of movement that takes us off-centre. That will probably unsettle people. They'll be thinking: 'What's Moss trying to say there?' Patterson says it ends with a note of uncertainty but also hope. 'The future is uncertain. But in that uncertainty, there has to always be hope. We need to feel hopeful … We've got to make serious work now. Shayne doesn't do anything by halves, and neither do I. 'The social impact of this piece is a very important part of my arts practice. As a proud indigenous Ngāti Tūwharetoa grandson, it's important that I stand up and speak from that place proudly and speak on behalf of dance proudly. I hope that we can create something beautiful and hopeful, that speaks about the importance of knowing who we are.' Choreographers Moss Te Ururangi Patterson and Shaun James Kelly. Photos / Stephen A'Court A second work, Chrysalis, is also having its world premiere in the programme. Created by the RNZB choreographer-in-residence, Shaun James Kelly, it's his first commissioned production for the main stage. It's an important, symbolic piece, coming just months after the Scottish-born dancer, who has spent 12 years with the RNZB, was given New Zealand residency. There's a deeper story in Chrysalis about his metamorphosis as a dancer in Scotland, to his journey as a soloist and choreographer with the RNZB. 'It's that journey of everything I've learned and my collaboration with the dancers I perform with too,' he says. Chrysalis begins with the dancers emerging in trench coats with costumes beneath. During the next 40 minutes, they will slowly discard their garments, until each dancer simply wears a unique, hand-painted unitard by fashion designer Rory William Docherty. 'I came across this concept where you wear clothing to hide yourself or to express yourself,' James Kelly says. 'Some people allow you to let down your guard, to reveal your true self. I thought, what is the best way to show that to an audience?' Royal New Zealand Ballet & New Zealand Dance Company: Home, Land and Sea, choreographed by Moss Patterson, music by Shayne Carter: Wellington, July 24-26; Auckland, July 31-Aug 2; August 8-9.
Newsroom
8 hours ago
- Newsroom
Land of the long white saviour fiction
William Delisle Hay is despicable. He travelled to and lived in New Zealand in the 1870s as part of the larger 19th-century British imperial project, and his 1880 novella, The Doom of the Great City, imagines the land as a site primed for imperial conquest and repopulation. He posits the North Island as the narrator's reward for surviving a city-destroying toxic fog that has decimated London's population. We have republished this work as scholars of Victorian climate fiction, but we do not want to dismiss the story as simply a product of its time. Imperialist attitudes are not exclusively consigned to stories from the past. Steve Braunias recently reviewed The Doom of the Great City and pointed to a thread of racist and imperialist attitudes in the text. Colonisation is framed as essentially 'saving' and 'improving' lands that Hay clearly knew were inhabited by Māori. Our new critical edition of this text brings together research identifying these attitudes towards indigenous people and recognising how they persist in far too many climate disaster narratives today. We witness them in the themes of more recent stories like Avatar (2009), a white saviour story in which a US Marine, Jake Sully, cosplays as an indigenous member of the Na'vi. He 'saves' the Na'vi by doing indigeneity better than any of their own warriors when he inexplicably acquires the ability to ride a mystical beast, the Toruk, a once-in-a-generation skill. More recently, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024), portrays the reclamation of indigenous lands as a possible solution to saving an Australia ruined by industrialisation. Furiosa, the heroine, attempts to take others home with her to the 'green place,' a region where matriarchal indigenous practices and agricultural technology have created an oasis amidst the havoc wrecked by fossil fuel consumption. As the film is a prequel, however, audiences know that the series has already casually assumed the death of even this hybrid indigenous society. Not all climate-induced disaster narratives support the imperialist visions that undergird Hay's book The Doom of the Great City, but working on this edition has taught us that it is past time for disaster film viewers and Cli-Fi readers to take another look at the sources and methods of their enjoyment. Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic stories are fantasies, but many remain tethered to a long and violent legacy of very real assumptions about whose life and land has value – about whose stories deserve to be told and preserved. These same ideas continue to fuel processes of mass extinction and genocide around the world. Even in 1880, Hay observed that fossil fuels and human activity had started converting naturally occurring phenomena into deadly threats. He writes: 'A London fog was no mere mist: it was the heavy mist, in the first place, that we are accustomed to in most latitudes, but it was that mist supercharged with coal smoke, with minute carbonaceous particles, 'grits' and 'smuts,' with certain heavy gases, and with a vast number of other impurities. It was chiefly the result of the huge and reckless consumption of coal carried on over the wide-extending city, the smoke from which, not being re-consumed or filtered off in any way, was caught up and retained by the vapour-laden air.' Clearly, recognising human-induced climate change is not new. His book was one of the first stories of urban apocalypse and a precursor of the popular climate fiction genre. Hay begins his novella with a brief frame story in which New Zealand is empty and full of promise. The British narrator relocates to the North Island as one of the very few survivors of the toxic fog that destroys London. He enjoys the beautiful, open, and fertile land – the inhabitants of which are away or perpetually wandering. Hay's story is also a haunting account of environmental disaster: a deadly fog annihilates the population of the English capital. The narrator himself identifies the consequences of industrial capitalism and extractive colonialism in The Doom of the Great City. This apocalyptic vision has global implications for how we think about issues such as global warming, urbanisation, and resource exploitation. And with these insights, The Doom of the Great City also invites us to think about how the stories we tell about such issues have also been used to legitimise imperialist activities and white supremacist projects. Hay was not the first in the 19th century to position New Zealand within an imagined apocalypse. In 1840, Thomas Macaulay wrote about 'some traveller from New Zealand' who 'shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch on London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's.' The famous English historian, politician, and imperialist imagines a mysterious itinerant figure from New Zealand who observes and records the demise of London – the epicentre of the British Empire. Macaulay's treatment became quite popular, and his image of a wandering Māori man informed and supported 19th century understandings of London's future apocalypse. Indeed, by 1865, Macaulay's image had gained such popularity that Punch satirically banned 'Macaulay's New Zealander,' announcing: 'He can no longer be suffered to impede the Traffic over London Bridge. Much wanted at the present time in his own country. May return when London is in ruins.' Mr Punch's comments on the cultural representation of Macaulay's wandering post-apocalyptic New Zealander highlight his use and his absence: the Māori figure has been displaced, deprived of his individuality, and made into a hackneyed trope by British thinkers to herald the future desolation of London and signify the availability of colonial lands. Hay's 1860 novel The Doom of the Great City, relies on assumptions about Macaulay's mysterious 'New Zealander' to construct a tale of vast devastation – and renewal in the Global South. The book's narrator turns to a common trope of climate disaster narratives: the assumption that indigenous peoples are either absent or amenable and available for colonisation by the disaster's survivors. And, the survivor will not just colonise, but colonisation will be described as a process of converting nature into civilisation. Hay's narrator boasts to his progeny that 'Zealandia' was 'almost a solitude, almost a virgin wilderness' that he has, through his own procreation, turned into 'now one of our most populous rural districts'. Braunias' stark assessment of our new edition of the 1880 book raises many of the questions we consider as scholars and editors of 19th century texts. Together, we think about why many continue to read 19th century literature without recognising the imprint of Britain's imperial project. The value of these texts, however, is in the kinds of reflective questions they generate about disaster stories even today. Why is it that Cli-Fi storytellers still rely on representations of the Global South as a site primed for conquest and repopulation? How do tales of destruction and devastation generate renewed enthusiasm for colonialism under another name or disguise racist actions – in both the past and present? How are characters still used to imagine the relationship between imminent disaster in the Global North and available, lush space in the Global South? These questions should be considered both on and off university campuses. By asking questions like this about a historical text, we present the following charge to students of 19th century literature and Cli-Fi fans alike: when will all be as able to recognise the toxic ideology in Cli-Fi survivor blockbusters, doomsday-prepper subreddits, and 'white-people-do-indigeneity-best' Disney fantasies as easily as it can be recognised in Hay's writing? Many Cli-Fi narratives encourage us to positively identify with survivors, provide a vision of hope, or even grant audiences a sense of relief that our 'real world' is not as terrible as the imagined one. Hay's text, however, hinders these kinds of 'feel-good' responses by revealing the imperialist ideology that fuels such disaster-survival fantasies. The Doom of the Great City says the quiet parts out loud – and encourages us to look for similar messages in other stories and films that, despite the entertainment they provide, continue to use accounts of disaster and destruction to justify ongoing colonisation and white supremacy. The new edition of The Doom of the Great City; Being the Narrative of a Survivor, Written A.D. 1942 by William Delilse Hay, co-edited by Michael Kramp and Sarita Jayanty Mizin (West Virginia University Press, $US $24.99) is available as an e-book.
Otago Daily Times
a day ago
- Otago Daily Times
Renowned blues singer film a blast from the past
Thirty-four years ago, Derek McCullough was in Memphis as a judge for the World Barbeque Championships. At the time he owned Double D's Bar and Grill and operated in the Arts Centre. It was a memorable time in Memphis, the home of the blues and the birthplace of rock and roll – he got the opportunity to meet legends BB King and Ruby Wilson. McCullough, who is now chair of the Mt Pleasant Memorial Community Centre and Residents Association, asked Wilson if she would perform at the first Blues, Brews and BBQs which he was organising at Hagley Park in 1993. To his amazement she agreed and the rest is history. 'She was great, she was a blues diva of the first ilk, knew exactly what she liked,' he recalls. 'Just stunning, in a club setting she had the audience in the palm of her hand, a real professional performer with an amazing voice.' Now a slice of that memorable day resurfaced last week with footage of her performance which has never been played before, McCullough says. CTV filmed the festival and it was played on Friday as a fundraiser for the Mt Pleasant Community Centre 'Raise the Roof' campaign. It helped pay for a louvered roof for its front deck costing $130,000. So far more than $35,000 has been raised. McCullough was clearing out his attic, looking for items to use for the community centre's Art in the Attic fundraiser earlier in the year when he came across a VHS copy of the festival. He transferred it to a USB stick and played it on his TV to make sure it worked. 'It just took me right back to those days, those heady days,' he said. As part of the trip to the barbecue event in Memphis in 1991, McCullough was invited to the opening of BB King's Blues Bar on the iconic Beale Street, where Ruby Wilson was the featured singer. He had grown up listening to blues music, so when he had the opportunity to meet BB King, it was a surreal moment for him. 'Incredible, a little boy from Nelson meeting BB King was a real treat. He was very humble, a great guy and charming,' said McCullough. Wilson toured and sang in Beale Street clubs for almost 40 years, until she died in 2016 from a heart attack aged 68. She took to the stage at Hagley Park for Blues, Brews and BBQs on January 31, 1993. 'Before long she had them (crowd) all up right up the front. 'When you see the film, you'll see why she was considered the Queen of Beale Street,' he said. She was backed by Christchurch band The Coalrangers. Wilson toured New Zealand when she was out here. Her opening act was at Turangawaewae in Ngaruawahia, the official residence of the Māori monarch. She performed for Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikahu, who Wilson also met and befriended in Memphis, said McCullough. 'That was a real honour (for Wilson) to be invited to that,' he said. Wilson did not charge a performing fee at the Hagley Park event, McCullough instead paying for her accommodation, expenses and transport while on tour. He had a sponsorship from Continental Airlines to fly her to New Zealand and back. 'She just appreciated the opportunity to come to New Zealand,' said McCullough. She also spent a night at a blues club in Manchester St, two nights at the famed Gluepot in Auckland and one night in Wellington.
