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7 December – 22 January 2007
MUNT~ MOSS Hamish Palmer
“Everything that is alive has an urge to appear” - Hannah Arendt
*While I would not wish to imply that this work was born under logical conditions, I have provided here some notes about aspects of the painting/non-painting, and some influences that might not be immediately apparent.
Instructions from Max
In May 2005 during routine preparation of an evening meal, the image of Buddha appeared within a cut kumara in Eastbourne, Wellington. A portion of the kumara was forwarded to Hamish Palmer, a local kumara expert for research purposes.
The night of receiving the Buddha Kumara, Hamish was visited in a dream by Max Gimblett (a well known New Zealand artist known for exploring Buddhist themes in his work) who deeply intoned instructions for using the kumara. A resulting recipe blending domesticated vegetable, transcendent discourse, and interior decoration forms the roots of Munt and Moss.
Munt and Moss is part of a continuing exploration into everyday aesthetic manifestations of relationships between nature and culture. Kumara have been a most suitable media for searching these connections as they are both a plant form and a product of agriculture. In this show, munt represents humans while moss stands in for nature (not that I believe the two to be separate).
Munt and Moss is a collection of works made during the past year. Most are seen here in their first public outing, while some have featured in other configurations. Many of the kumara now bathing in hand protectiles were residents of the recent Birds exhibition here at Pataka.
Frequency Keys
The series of paintings in this exhibition which appear to be abstractions of lettering take their point of departure from a message from the kumaras channelled through Andrea Mikana Pinkham at Giza, Egypt in October 2000.
Beginning their communication with “Greetings unto you, dear ones, we are that which is kumara”, the kumara go on to explain that,”Kumara is not a name as you know it on your plane of consciousness, but rather a frequency key ......The “Ma” is the frequency key for the feminine energies; the “Ra” is the frequency key for the male energies. The “Ku” is the balance point or the integration of those energies that brings one into full remembrance”
I was interested in ways that metaphysical discourses present ‘deeper truths’ as existing beneath the plane of perceived reality and have been addressing sub-surface realities through painting by restructuring figure/ground relationships. This can be observed in many of the paintings in Munt and Moss where the subject of the picture is beneath the surface, on raw canvas, and instead the background is painted. In these text works, the subject (the text/frequency key/truth ‘KUMARA’) is pushed into the background and non-painted, while the spaces between the letters are fully rendered.
These works share a dialogue, in the spectrum of New Zealand Art, with text paintings that address transcendent themes while referring to roadside vegetable signs.
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