Back Story Journal of New Zealand Art, Media & Design History

Editorial

Alan Cocker — 2022-06-24

Mothers Need To Know Better: Radio, the Department of Health, and improving the Nation

Claire Macindoe — 2022-06-24

When radio broadcasting first crackled onto the airwaves it was met with great enthusiasm from the wider public. Although we may now associate it more with late night talkback sessions and music’s top forty, educational broadcasting was a key feature of early radio and helped to establish a deeply ingrained listening culture within New Zealand. Educational broadcasts helped to legitimise radio as more than just a source of light entertainment. Women were a key target for many radio-based educational efforts, viewed as both the main consumers of broadcast content and in the greatest need of instruction within the domestic sphere. Health and the idea of ‘scientific motherhood’ were a key component of these efforts. When World War Two required the Department of Health to adopt new methods of connecting with the public, radio was deemed the most effective option. Women were responsible for the health of the family, and there was already a well-established culture of educating women within the domestic sphere via the radio.

The Western and the New Zealand Wars

Brendan Sheridan — 2022-06-24

There are multiple parallels between the 19th Century migrations into indigenous lands in the American West and Aotearoa. These include conflicts over land between incoming Europeans and indigenous nations, the complicated loyalties that arose during these conflicts, and later romanticisation of the time period. This paper examines two films set during the New Zealand Wars and compares these films to the American Western genre, in particular through the lenses of historical fiction and historiographic metafiction. These approaches provide insight into how the films depict events and why the way they are depicted is dependent upon historical context. These films, The Te Kooti Trail (1927) and Utu (1983), engage with similar subject matter and depict the same time period but portray history in radically different tones.

Harry Turbott in the Wide World

Tony Watkins — 2022-06-24

Harry Turbott (1930-2016) was much more than an architect and a landscape architect. In his self-effacing, humble, bare-foot,² New Zealand way he challenged both the creeping gentrification of an increasingly passive society and the morphing of the built-environment into a threat to the future of a planet he both loved and respected. In this reflection Tony Watkins weaves relationships between Harry’s story and the story of the global environmental movement. At this time of environmental crisis looking back suggests how we might move forward.

New Zealand Sculpture OnShore: Popular, Successful and Vitally Important

Jessica Agoston — 2022-06-24

As a result of not being subject to the same rules, regulations and public consultation requirements of permanent public artworks, temporary art occupies a privileged position. If a member of the public does not like what they see, they need not worry. The artwork in question will be gone soon enough. This position presents not only an opportunity for engagement with a large, diverse audience, but also, as will be suggested, the necessity for the temporary to engage meaningfully with the physical, historic, and cultural layers of the site on which it occurs. Taking the Auckland Council Public Art Policy as a point of departure, and using New Zealand Sculpture OnShore (NZ SoS) as a proxy for temporary public art exhibitions that co-opt public spaces, the complex matrix and inherently political nature of public art will be explored and examined. Specific attention is given to site, audience, time and space that combine create place. The theories of Lucy Lippard, Mary Jane Jacob, John Dewey and others inform the critical discussion. Interviews with multiple people who had significant roles in the development and creation of NZ SoS as it exists today offer deeper insights into the historical background, ideology and purpose that underpins the exhibition.

The Colonial Elephant in the Room: Michael Parekōwhai’s The Lighthouse and Captain James Cook

Alanna O'Riley — 2022-06-24

Imperial rule has long been supported by the establishment of monuments. However, in our current climate of tumultuous politics and failing social systems, these monuments occupy increasingly shaky ground. Given a growing crusade against monumental statues the public silence on Michael Parekōwhai’s statue of Captain James Cook in The Lighthouse (Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand, 2017) is deafening. In Aotearoa New Zealand, Captain James Cook is a familiar, albeit divisive, figure. To some, Cook is known as a British navigator, explorer, and cartographer; a founder of nations, friend to natives, with enlightened and scientific motivations. To indigenous communities, Cook was the thief, murderer, and kidnapper who knowingly spread disease when arriving in the Pacific with the intent to find ample land for the British Crown to colonise. This essay explores the significance of the statue of Cook within The Lighthouse, particularly in relation to the legacy of colonial monuments and memorialisation. In The Lighthouse, sculptor Michael Parekōwhai recasts Cook as a complex emblem of personal and collective identity, highlighting issues of place, legacy, and sovereignty. Parekōwhai revises the role of the colonial monument, reclaiming Cook as an instrument in the balancing of historical and national narratives.