Ralph Hotere

Teaching and an expanding practice

Hone Papita Raukura Hōtere grew up at Mitimiti, trained as a teacher and art specialist, and worked as a Māori arts adviser. Teaching and travel formed a practice grounded in drawing but open to international modernism.

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Black paintings, words and public work

After returning from Europe, he developed the black paintings and moved to Otago with the 1969 Frances Hodgkins Fellowship. Words by poets including Hone Tuwhare and Cilla McQueen entered his work. Public commissions and theatre work expanded its scale.

Black phoenix transformed a burnt fishing boat into an assemblage of bow and planks, making the history of the material part of a newly organised space.

Sources for this section: [1] · [2]

Protest and collaboration

His work opposed the proposed Aramoana smelter and responded to the Springbok tour and the Rainbow Warrior bombing. The relationship between abstraction and public argument remained central.

With Bill Culbert, he developed works combining dark surfaces and fluorescent light. The Post black windows and later Fault commission emerged from an ongoing conversation between distinct practices, rather than one artist merely supplying materials for the other.

They met as art students in London. Culbert’s later visits made Port Chalmers a shared place for their artistic conversation.

Sources for this section: [1] · [3]

Recognition and later life

Exhibitions, an honorary doctorate and the Order of New Zealand recognised his work. A stroke affected his later life; he died in Dunedin in 2013.

Sources for this section: [1]