MATAWHERO: BULLET HOLES AND BANDAGES
28 November 2009 – 14 March 2010

Peter Adsett has exhibited widely throughout Australia, Japan, the US and New Zealand. He has built a considerable career as an accomplished and distinctive abstract artist.

Come and hear Peter Adsett talk about his new exhibition being opened at 1pm, on 28 November at Pataka.

Peter Adsett has taken one of the most arresting events in Tairawhiti history and declined to talk about it. Instead, through his decades-long experimentation with abstraction, the Melbourne-based artist invites the viewer to “seek out the edges”, to try to make their own sense out of the 1868 Matawhero Massacre.

Not that his exhibition, Matawhero: Bullet Holes & Bandages, is about the massacre per se. What it’s about, he says, is the process of painting – about the language of abstraction, the responses of Western artists to “spaces” in indigenous art and, most importantly, how black and white are never actually black and white. In the past Adsett has, in exploring his craft, dealt with issues from decay (in the 2005 exhibition More Rot) to the potential vitriol of colour (Polychrome Poison, 2002).

Fittingly, though, there is a sense of violence in the Matawhero series. Or rather, as the artist puts it, there is “violation” in the damaged surfaces of the 25 canvases. The thick bristles that are torn from his brush as he paints are incorporated into the works. As are other pock-like contaminants that, to a wondering eye, might be interpreted as bullet holes. “What first occurs to me when I think about Matawhero is that it was a violation,” the Gisborne-born artist said. “These paintings, too, have in a way been violated. Their surfaces have been destroyed.” He says his relationship with Matawhero, and with people who live there, was the reason why it took him 30 years to offer his visual response to its history.

NOTE: The Matawhero Massacre refers to the 1868 incident when Maori prophet Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki and his followers killed around 60 people — roughly equal numbers of Maori and Pakeha. The attack was said to be vengeance for Te Kooti’s treatment after his capture at Waerenga-a-hika three years earlier (SOURCE: NZ History).