Michael Parekōwhai Turk Lane 2001 c-type print, edition of 8 1550 x 1250mm PROVENANCE Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Michael Lett, Auckland, c2005. EXHIBITIONS Another from the edition included in 2002 Biennale of Sydney: (The World May Be) Fantastic, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 15 May - 14 July 2002. LITERATURE Ewen McDonald (editor), 2002 Biennale of Sydney: (The World May Be) Fantastic (Sydney: Biennale of Sydney, 2002) (cited); Michael Lett and Ryan Moore (editors), Michael Pareōwhai (Auckland: Michael Lett Publishing, 2007)."
Michael Parekōwhai Kapa Haka 2015 fibreglass and automotive paint, 12/15 640 x 170 x 170mm (widest points) PROVENANCE Private collection, Auckland. Michael Parekōwhai - Kapa Haka Essay by JEMMA FIELD Executed in 2003, Michael Parekōwhai's installation piece Kapa Haka was commissioned for the exhibition Paradise Now? Contemporary Art from the Pacific (2004) held at the Asia Society Museum in New York. The fifteen near-identical, life-sized, glossy fibreglass figures, posed as security guards, were originally positioned outside the museum as though guarding the precious treasures within. Measuring around six feet tall and solid in stature, each of the guards stood with legs apart and arms staunchly crossed, collectively packing a powerful punch. This work, Kapa Haka (2015), stands in a smaller stature and is part of another edition of fifteen, each with identical white security tags. The figure's head is slightly tilted up, and even at 640mm high and standing alone the work has a certain presence and strength of stature. In a similar manner to his earlier work Poorman, Beggarman, Thief (1999), which was modelled on Parekōwhai's father, the security guard that stars repeatedly in Kapa Haka is modelled on the artist's brother, Paratene, who is indeed a security guard. The use of repetition in Kapa Haka draws attention to issues of identity, since Parekōwhai's mannequins are afforded scant individuality. Apart from their identifying colour tags, in this instance white, they are lumped together in an undifferentiated mass: Parekōwhai thus makes a poignant comment on Aotearoa race relations and the tendency for Māori to be viewed as a non-specific entity. The various iterations of Kapa Haka are only differentiated by small features. By crafting a crowd of identical sameness, Parekōwhai invites the spectator to imagine the full spectrum of difference and individuality that quietly thrives under the pretence of an apparently indistinguishable exterior and, in the process, to register the difference between what people assume about Māori en masse and what Parekōwhai knows about his brother as an individual person. The title Kapa Haka refers to a specific and time-honoured Māori tradition that involves both song and dance, and works as a medium through which a unique cultural identity is expressed. In the context of Parekōwhai's work, this custom is ironically and playfully appropriated in a frozen performance piece. In Aotearoa, the larger fibreglass Kapa Haka figures were initially exhibited at Michael Lett on Karangahape Road, Auckland, where five of them stood motionless inside the front window and unabashedly guarded the empty gallery space. As art objects, the figures are instantly alluring with their lustrous, glossy finish and their curious sameness, which, in the same manner as identical twins, cannot fail to pique the viewer's curiosity and insist on close consideration. Parekōwhai's infinitely layered pieces that comprise Kapa Haka are successful in their multiplicity of meaning. Their heavy physical presence demands that the spectator reconsider inherited assumptions concerning racial stereotyping, while their brusque pose, blank expression and flawless polish allow them to be appreciated as aesthetic objects.
Michael Parekōwhai Portrait of Elmer Keith No. 1 2004 c-type print, edition of 10 1250 x 1010mm PROVENANCE Private collection, Auckland. Michael Parekōwhai – Portrait of Elmer Keith No. 1 Essay by ANDREW CLARK This image is part of a series entitled The Beverly Hills Gun Club, which consists of a number of works involving taxidermy specimens of sparrows and rabbits. Some of these works take the form of close-up photographs of said specimens, all shot against the same vivid orange-red background. The crisp, immaculate nature of this photo, where each feather and glinting glass eye is captured in perfect focus, suggests an advertisement or magazine spread, as does the vividly coloured backdrop, with its sense of placeless, nervous energy. Adding to the aura of artificiality that surrounds the work is the fact that this is a photograph of another representation. The object depicted is not an animal, but a carefully prepared example of taxidermy, using the skin and feathers of a real creature to create a representative simulacrum of it, devoid of life or substance but retaining an appearance of vitality that is at once disturbing and oddly appealing. These are images that are thoroughly curated, chosen and presented as part of a coherent strategy, a completely mediated experience. But what exactly is being represented, and why? The title of the series, as well as the title of each individual photograph, has a great deal of bearing on this question. As with many of Parekōwhai's works, language plays a key role in the encoding and decoding of meaning - the image itself is only a part of the puzzle. Each rabbit and sparrow photographed has been given a name: Elmer Keith, Ed Brown, Jimmy Rae, Larry Vickers, and Lou Lombardi. These are not the type of names associated with animals, but oddly specific human names, names that suggest something about their owners. The title of the series implies that these human-sounding animals are part of the eponymous club, a cadre of heavily armed creatures hailing from a location intimately associated with wealth and privilege. A small amount of internet research reveals that some of these names belong to people who could plausibly belong to such a club: Elmer Keith was the name of an American gun enthusiast who developed a new type of ammunition for revolvers, while Ed Brown appears to be the name of a firearms manufacturer, with a possible reference to Edwin Brown, a nineteenth-century English naturalist and taxidermy collector. Jimmy Rae is more opaque, possibly referring to either an American NFL player, a Scottish footballer, or the name of a song by Canadian singer Corey Hart, although none of these solutions seems completely satisfactory. Likewise, there is a Larry Vickers who claims to be an ex-US Army Delta Force operative who works in the firearms industry as a consultant, although the more likely reference would be to the Vickers machine gun, a World War One-era firearm. Lastly, Lou Lombardi is a television actor who played an FBI agent in The Sopranos, offering a further connection to both popular and gun culture. There is an element of wry humour in ascribing these masculine, aggressive-sounding names to small, apparently inoffensive creatures such as rabbits and sparrows, more evocative of the anthropomorphic tales of Beatrix Potter than of gun-club patrons. Indeed, these animals seem as likely to have been the victims of the gun club, perverse trophies celebrating the demises of small woodland creatures. However, in the context of New Zealand's native ecosystem, species such as rabbits, sparrows, possums and deer may as well have come equipped with an arsenal of weaponry, for all the destruction their introduction has caused. These unsettling, subtly morbid portraits are equally readable as mugshots of aggressive invaders, simultaneously cataloguing their crimes and perhaps offering them a backhanded notoriety otherwise denied such lowly creatures. Other works by Parekōwhai have positioned rabbits in the guise of old west gunfighters (Roebuck Jones and the Cuniculus Kid, from 2001) or as immense presences like Japanese kaiju monsters in public spaces (Cosmo McMurty and Jim McMurty, from 2006). The photographs in The Beverly Hills Gun Club series echo these gestures, asking the viewer to reconsider their perceptions of what is "cute" and what is threatening or dangerous. Taxidermy, whether intentionally or not, often traffics in this dichotomy; small animals appeal to humans because of their large eyes, a characteristic that is associated with passivity and infancy, but our knowledge that the animal itself is dead works to undermine these warm feelings, leaving instead a sense of revulsion or morbid curiosity. Parekōwhai mobilises these conflicting responses, directing the viewer to re-examine their own perceptions of the postcolonial environment. The positioning of these European-sounding names behind the visages of invasive pest species speaks eloquently about the colonial history of New Zealand, a topic itself buried beneath layers of guilt, political narrative, wilful ignorance and historical revisionism. Parekōwhai offers a reminder that the British colonial project was a multifaceted, aggressive operation, seeking to elide or eradicate both the people and the ecology of colonised places. The ubiquity of introduced species such as rabbits and sparrows, and the extent to which they are considered normal, almost invisible parts of New Zealand's landscape, shows how pervasive colonialism is as an ecological and cultural force. The reference to Beverly Hills adds an additional layer of meaning to the work, suggesting that the multinational nature of American popular culture represents itself a further wave of colonisation.
MICHAEL PAREKOWHAI, born 1968, New Zealand, ATARANGI #8, 2004, powder coated aluminium, two parts DIMENSIONS: 20.0 x 160.0 x 10.0 cm each 40.0 x 160.0 x 10.0 cm overall PROVENANCE: Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney Private collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in 2004
Michael Parekowhai Etaples inscribed in printed lettering Michael Parekowhai, Etaples 2001, c-type colour photograph, ed. of 8, 1500 x 1250, image 1550mm x 1250mm Frame on Michael Lett Gallery label verso 1500mm x 1250mm
MICHAEL PAREKOWHAI (born 1968) Sparrow (The Beverly Hills Club Series) 2004 taxidermy sparrow on powder coated aluminium cylinder 19.0 x 13.0 x 20.0 cm
Michael Parekowhai Ed Brown (from the Beverly Hills Gun Club series) taxidermied sparrow, powder coated aluminium 155 x 100 x 100mm This is a small sculpture, but one that would be eye-catching in any domestic environment, particularly at night when one does not expect to see sparrows up and about - least of all in a house. For Parekowhai a sparrow is not a cute little bird but an insidious colonial invader, an unwanted intruder with a propensity to breed rapidly and ravage natural resources. One sparrow by itself looks innocuously individual; calling it Ed Brown makes it a winged symbol for Pakeha. Parekowhai also made large photographic portraits of these taxidermy birds with the same bright orange in the background. The photographs have unnerving detail but the sculptures intrigue because of their ambiguity. They could be alive but sleeping. They seem sweet but are also an expression of anger. John Hurrell
