Michael Parekowhai

Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
The Austcorp Group Limited Art Collection; purchased from the above

Kapa Haka, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, 2003
Rainbow Servant Dreaming, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney 28 April - 21 May 2005, cat. 2

This work is in good original condition.
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Michael Parekowhai is one of New Zealand's most highly-regarded contemporary artists. Over the past 15 years he has shown widely in New Zealand, Australia and beyond, being included in such imortant exhibitions as the first Auckland Triennial (2001), the Biennales of Sydney (2002), Guangju and São Paulo (2004), and in the Asia-Pacific Triennial, Brisbane (2006). His work is held in major public collections across the Asia-Pacific region and in Europe.

Parekowhai is a Maori of Nga Ariki/Ngati Whakaronga descent, and the major themes of his sculpture and photography are those of postcolonial artists worldwide. Neither naïve nor cynical, he plays with the tragicomic mismatches of imperialism: introduced peoples, introduced species, introduced cultures and the associated personal, familial, ethnic and national alienation. Equally central is an ironic fondness for the images and finishes of (American) popular and commercial culture, and his sculptures have all the hubristic scale and high gloss of advertising and point of sale display, the same aesthetic of shiny gigantism found in, say, a pop artist like Claes Oldenburg, or the post-pop Jeff Koons.

The present work also illustrates one of the artist's secondary preoccupations: serial-collective sociality, the idea of camaraderie, of the 'band of brothers.' It is in fact one of a set of 15 near-identical sculptures (a full rugby team, in fact) of white-shirted, black-trousered, big-bellied, arms-folded security guards. The burly Polynesian bouncer is a familiar figure in pubs, clubs, shopping centres and public spaces both in Australia and New Zealand, and through this sculpture Parekowhai directly announces the social and economic marginalisation of Pacific peoples. At the same time, it is more than a glib, disinterested identity art one-liner; it is personal. The figure was modelled on the artist's elder brother, who actually works in the security industry.

Finally, Parekowhai takes racial-political protest or resistance to the point where it becomes, quite simply, funny: the name of the work is te reo Maori for a traditional dance performance group, while each individual sculpture is named after a colour, and has that colour written (again in the Maori language) on its security swipe card. In this case the word is whero, meaning red, though when used as a noun, whero also means backside.

Originally commissioned for the landmark exhibition Paradise Now? Contemporary art from the Pacific held at the Asia Society Galleries, New York in 2004, the Kapa haka has since enjoyed an extended half-life, both in the exhibition and sale of its component figures and in a re-casting in bronze shown at the Auckland Art Fair in May of this year.