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Scoop
06-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Scoop
Brett Graham Speaks About The Loss Of His Dad - The Artist Fred Graham
The winter season of Matariki is a time to remember those who passed away over the past year and one of those was the artist, Fred Graham, who died last month at the age of 96. Just a week before, he had attended the unveiling of his sculpture Te Manu Rangimaarie, at Taupiri in the Waikato and his exhibition Toi Whakaata / Reflections, opened at Christchurch Art Gallery on 31 May. Matua Fred was also just days away from receiving the New Zealand Order of Merit after being named in the 2025 New Year's Honours list and he'd been chosen as one of Aotearoa's artists at this year's Venice Biennale international exhibition. His son Brett Graham is a prominent artist in his own right whose sculpture 'Wastelands' featured at last year's Venice Biennale. Speaking to RNZ's Matariki programme Brett said one of the sub themes of the Biennale was family relationships, so the head curator wanted Brett and his father's work to be shown. Fred Graham never actually made it to the Biennale that year but Brett said it was fantastic to see his father's work on display. "The works in that show we had grown up with as children. Whiti te Rā, it's quite a joyous piece, a celebration of the haka, and the colours that he used as a child always fascinated me. "Actually I got in trouble with the curator because I talked about these works being massive, like 2 or 3 metres big, because that's my childhood memory of them and then of course when we unpacked them, they were a metre." Brett said people often talk about living up to the legacy of his parents, but rather than try to break away from the previous generation and create something new as is the nature of western art, for Māori artists it's about absorbing the past and moving forward. "We had such a great relationship, there was never any tension there or pressure at all. "I never sort of struggled with that legacy it was always just a natural path and dad was very generous." In fact, he said it was his mother who encouraged both him and his and his sister into the arts. "Dad loved to tell the story about he'd made a work so high, he called it Growth it's in his exhibition in Christchurch, and he always used to love to tell the story about how I was so brainwashed I'd drag it round the house as a Teddy Bear until he had his first exhibition and he had no qualms selling the thing." Brett said when his father saw that he told his mother 'I hate to break to you but I think your son is going to be an artist.' "I never wanted to be anything else but an artist, or probably not capable of being anything else," Brett said. He said growing up he was surrounded by Māori artists like Selwyn Muru and Kāterina Mataira so art came very naturally. Brett said his father's generation of artists were so interesting especially the carvers, because they loved the work of British sculptors. "When I started to use whakairo patterns, pākati and haehae and so on, he'd say to me 'nice carving, what do you want to do all that old stuff for?' That's the irony of Maoridom the arts scene now, the core group of Waikato carvers for example they're all in their 20s and then the so called 'contemporary artists' people like dad were in their 90s and 80s."
RNZ News
06-07-2025
- Entertainment
- RNZ News
Brett Graham speaks about the loss of his dad - the artist Fred Graham
Photo: Susana Lei'ataua The winter season of Matariki is a time to remember those who passed away over the past year and one of those was the artist, Fred Graham, who died last month at the age of 96. Just a week before, he had attended the unveiling of his sculpture Te Manu Rangimaarie, at Taupiri in the Waikato and his exhibition Toi Whakaata / Reflections, opened at Christchurch Art Gallery on 31 May. Matua Fred was also just days away from receiving the New Zealand Order of Merit after being named in the 2025 New Year's Honours list and he'd been chosen as one of Aotearoa's artists at this year's Venice Biennale international exhibition. His son Brett Graham is a prominent artist in his own right whose sculpture 'Wastelands' featured at last year's Venice Biennale. Brett Graham's Wasteland Photo: Ben Stewart Speaking to RNZ's Matariki programme Brett said one of the sub themes of the Biennale was family relationships, so the head curator wanted Brett and his father's work to be shown. Fred Graham never actually made it to the Biennale that year but Brett said it was fantastic to see his father's work on display. "The works in that show we had grown up with as children. Whiti te Rā, it's quite a joyous piece, a celebration of the haka, and the colours that he used as a child always fascinated me. "Actually I got in trouble with the curator because I talked about these works being massive, like 2 or 3 metres big, because that's my childhood memory of them and then of course when we unpacked them, they were a metre." Brett said people often talk about living up to the legacy of his parents, but rather than try to break away from the previous generation and create something new as is the nature of western art, for Māori artists it's about absorbing the past and moving forward. "We had such a great relationship, there was never any tension there or pressure at all. "I never sort of struggled with that legacy it was always just a natural path and dad was very generous." In fact, he said it was his mother who encouraged both him and his and his sister into the arts. "Dad loved to tell the story about he'd made a work so high, he called it Growth it's in his exhibition in Christchurch, and he always used to love to tell the story about how I was so brainwashed I'd drag it round the house as a Teddy Bear until he had his first exhibition and he had no qualms selling the thing." Fred Graham's Growth. (please keep full size) Photo: Supplied/Sam Hartnett Brett said when his father saw that he told his mother 'I hate to break to you but I think your son is going to be an artist.' "I never wanted to be anything else but an artist, or probably not capable of being anything else," Brett said. He said growing up he was surrounded by Māori artists like Selwyn Muru and Kāterina Mataira so art came very naturally. Brett said his father's generation of artists were so interesting especially the carvers, because they loved the work of British sculptors. "When I started to use whakairo patterns, pākati and haehae and so on, he'd say to me 'nice carving, what do you want to do all that old stuff for?' That's the irony of Maoridom the arts scene now, the core group of Waikato carvers for example they're all in their 20s and then the so called 'contemporary artists' people like dad were in their 90s and 80s." Installation view of Fred Graham's Toi Whaakata / Reflections exhibition, Te Uru, 2024. Photo: Supplied/Sam Hartnett Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
Otago Daily Times
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
Photographic artist appointed ONZM
Acclaimed photographic artist Dr Fiona Pardington has been made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to photography. Based in South Canterbury for the past six years, Dr Pardington (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Waitaha, Ngāti Kahungunu) is an internationally acclaimed photographer active since the 1980s, who was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2017 for her services to photography. Since 2017, Dr Pardington has represented New Zealand at the London Art Fair and Art Basel Hong Kong. She participated in the 2018 major international exhibition "Oceania" at London's Royal Academy of the Arts and was the first New Zealander invited to participate in the Sharjah Biennial 16 in the United Arab Emirates in 2024. She collaborated with the Wellcome Collection Science Museum in London in 2019, resulting in the exhibition at Christchurch Art Gallery "Orphans of Māoriland". She has held four solo exhibitions in New Zealand galleries since 2017 and has been featured in numerous national group exhibitions. Dr Pardington has donated photographs to the collection of the Aigantighe Art Gallery in Timaru and Christchurch Art Gallery, as well as for a charity auction to support Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari wildlife reserve in Pukeatua. She has also donated funds for the Arts Foundation of New Zealand Te Tumu Toi for their Springboard award for emerging artists. Dr Pardington has sourced historical bird remains, including huia parts, from overseas auctions and donated them to the Canterbury Museum. She has previously been made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (Queen's Birthday 2017) and Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters (France) in 2016. In June last year, Dr Pardington's photographic exhibition "Te taha o te rangi" (The Edge of the Heavens) opened at the Aigantighe Art Gallery. The exhibition resulted from a visit to the South Canterbury Museum in 2023, when she was captivated by the dynamic and lifelike quality of the taxidermied native birds, and began focusing on photographing the birds' heads, treating them like human portraits. She said this new approach allowed her to delve deeply into her new local surroundings and community after having only relocated to South Canterbury in 2019.
RNZ News
27-04-2025
- Entertainment
- RNZ News
The first NZ Contemporary Japanese Art show in 20 years
culture arts 37 minutes ago Whether it's a brand like 100% Pure or paintings and film of a rural idyll, we've become familiar in Aotearoa New Zealand with the tension between our depictment of the landscape, and the reality when we consider the effects on it of economic and social development. Similar tensions are at play in what is being billed as the first show of contemporary Japanese art in New Zealand in 20 years: Disruptive Landscapes, on until August 24 at Christchurch Art Gallery . Curator Melanie Oliver selected video work over several research trips to Japan and was particularly inspired by artists influenced by what became known in Japanese film after the late 1960s as 'landscape theory'. A view of the landscape loaded with politics. It was Masao Adachi's 1969 film A.K.A. Serial Killer that first defined Japanese 'landscape theory. Variously labelled as 'anti-art' and 'anti-documentary', the film has a special screening at the gallery on May 17. The Japan Foundation have also provided funding for all the artists to come to Christchurch June 14-18 for performances and talks. Melanie Oliver has, since August been Senior Curator at Monash University Museum of Art in Melbourne and was previously Curator at Christchurch Art Gallery, where she has returned to for this exhibition.
