#i know claudia was on cloud nine to see them both get along so well

[fanfictionroxs]

OH THE LOST FATHER-DAUGHTER POTENTIAL!

[withinthescripts]

Season 2, Cassette 10: The Karikari Contemporary Gallery (1986)

[tape recorder turns on]

Welcome to the Karikari Contemporary Gallery. I am Hester Wells, curator and director. We are proud to present the life and works of one of Aotearoa’s most notable artists and founder of this gallery, Roimata Mangakāhia. This exhibit focuses on the evolution of Mangakāhia’s works over the course of her long career, from her early landscapes and portraits, skilful but straightforward, to her more surreal and fantastical focus on smaller objects later in her career. While Mangakāhia did not get the recognition she deserved from art critics or the public, at least internationally speaking, she was well regarded by her peers and was part of a sprawling collection of artists. In particular, she formed a close relationship with Claudia Atieno, in a friendship that could perhaps be compared to that of Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield.

This exhibit will address the inspiration the two artists took from each other’s works. Atieno was Mangakāhia’s passion. Her every work or gesture was received by Mangakāhia as either a favor or a threat. Perhaps they were.

Unlike Atieno, whose works dealt in wide statements, sweeping political views made clear in her re-imagining of famous works destroyed in the Great Reckoning, Mangakāhia reveled in the intimate depths of what makes us human. Her surreal twisting limbs and contorted faces showed the complexity of emotions within the body itself. Even her uninhabited landscapes enveloped the viewer, as if to place them into her world, forcing them to come to terms with the reality she was experiencing.

This exhibit is a survey of perhaps my favorite artist, a woman whose work should be celebrated more widely than it has been so far. Many art lovers, even those who live here in Aotearoa, never knew of Mangakāhia s work. We hope this exhibit will excite and enlighten you. To be frank, I’m almost jealous of those of you who will be experiencing Mangakāhia’s work for the first time.

Please begin your audio tour on the left as you enter and work clockwise around the room.

[bell chimes]

One. Early sketches, 1953 to 1958.

I’ve placed three early sketches by Roimata Mangakāhia in what I believe to be chronological order. The first on the far left is a charcoal drawing of a row boat at he end of a long dock. The boat is not moored to anything. It is near the dock, but disconnected from it. Mangakāhia faded the lines of the water gradually out into nothing, into the wide space of the page, and the ocean feels vast, far too vast for such a small vessel.

Inside the boat, she has drawn what looks to be a bag or satchel. I want you to look at the bag. Think about what she might have packed in this bag. Did she pack the bag herself, or was it someone else? Are they escaping with their remaining items?

I’m only guessing, but I believe Mangakāhia would have been about sixteen when she sketched this. She was born right at the end of the Great Reckoning, accords were being struck and weapons laid down. Mangakāhia was not yet born while refugees were desperately fleeing violence in boats too small for the journey ahead, but she may have heard stories about them. She may have taken inspiration from the decades before her birth. Or perhaps this is just a row boat, drawn by a Maori girl growing up in a coastal town.

The second charcoal drawing is of a damsel fly. These insects are common in Mangakāhia’s sketches, but I’ve never seen her include one in a fully realized painting. The damsel fly was also common in Claudia Atieno’s works, and I’m fairly positive the two things are connected. There is beauty in one artist in the Pacific and one in East Africa exploring the same motif.

Did you make that connection as well?

The third sketch is a pencil drawing of a young woman. I don’t know who she is, someone Mangakāhia knew as a teenager I suppose. Or someone she saw from afar. Do her dark eyes look familiar? Her smile, the way it turns up more on one side? The lines on her brow that suggest she may not want her likeness drawn, but is still happy to humor her friend, a young artist who hopes to immortalize a beautiful subject? Mangakāhia wants you to be attracted to this woman. She has drawn her in a way that suggests she was attracted to her.

I wonder what became of their relationship. I wonder if it’s important.

[bell chimes]

Two. “Providence”, 1964.

This painting is of the North American port city of Providence in the former United States. It seems that Mangakāhia must have visited it at some point in her life. She had traveled away from her home when she was in her twenties. At this point in history, after a couple of decades of recovery and restructure, art was flourishing in a way that had not been seen since the late 19th century. Mangakāhia wanted to study this new generation of artists, to write about them and to learn from them. This artistic period is known as the Modern Society Era.

This painting is fascinating, because it suggests Mangakāhia traveled by ship between North America and London, but there is no record of her ever having been aboard a cargo ship. All there is to suggest her voyage is one painting of a row of blue dock cranes and empty shipping containers. There’s not a single person or even boat visible here. It’s as if the city had been abandoned.

My best guess puts this painting in the early 1960’s, but I cannot be sure. I have spent some time in North America, but I have never been to Providence. I have been within a few hundred miles of it, I suppose. I have lived for a while within a few hundred miles of this shipyard.

My work in the former United States was neither safe nor enjoyable, but I’m happy I did it. I’m happier to be home.

[bell chimes]

Three. “Cornwall Cliffs”, 1972.

By the early 1970’s, Mangakāhia had found a home in Plymouth, in the former United Kingdom. While living there, she befriended her artistic hero Claudia Atieno, and began spending much of her time in Atieno’s home in Cornwall.

Atieno’s house sat on an island off the coast with cliffs that overlooked the juncture of the English Channel and the Celtic Sea. It was along those cliffs that Atieno lost her life. When Atieno went missing in 1972, many hoped she was simply keeping herself locked away while she worked on new paintings. But after several years, when most had given up hope, her body was finally found washed ashore not far from her home.

Mangakāhia made several paintings of the cliffs of Atieno’s island, a place where she loved to dive. Some scholars have written that both she and Atieno would spend warm summer afternoons diving together from cliffs behind the house into the rocky water below. I have heard accounts of this time in Mangakāhia’s life from some guided recordings she made for several museums. She frequently mentions diving at high tide. It seems unlikely that Atieno did, though.

I found documents that suggested Mangakāhia had recorded audio guides for 11 different museums, 9 of which are still running. I wrote to those 9 museums requesting copies of the cassettes. I received only 5 back, and according to 2 of those museums, they never distributed the recordings because they were not up to museum standards. I listened to the tapes. I would agree with that assessment. Particularly after Atieno’s body was discovered, Mangakāhia let her opinions and emotions overwhelm her enviable depth of knowledge.

This painting, “Cornwall Cliffs”, is reminiscent of the tragic comic scope of Pieter Bruegel’s “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus”. You can see in the lower right a crevice in the rocks. In that crevice, a whitecap. Is that upturned splash of water a wave on a stone? Or is it the aftermath of a diver completing her plunge?

In Bruegel’s wry satire, we see the farmers and workers carrying on about their day, despite the death of the fabled Greek hero. There are no humans visible in “Cornwall Cliffs”, but there are trees seen along the left-hand side and sheep along the shores in the distance. They too carry on about their days despite knowing nothing about this painting, diving, or Greek mythology.

Are you carrying on about your day? What are you doing later after you leave the gallery? Are you answering these questions aloud? Don’t do that.

[bell chimes]

Four. “Fingers Together”, 1973.

Following Atieno’s death in 1972, Mangakāhia’s paintings began to evolve from realist to surrealist. In “Fingers Together”, we see tendrils of bright colors seemingly bleeding down from the top of the canvas and fading into twisted points.

Notice the density of oils near the top, in thick repetitive strokes. There are nine different twisting lines here, so if we are to assume by the title that this is to represent fingers in two hands, there is one missing.

Where is the missing finger?

[bell chimes]

Five. “The Bodies”, 1972.

Here are two humanoid forms, one holding the other. On first glance, the erect figure in the background appears to be cradling the limp figure in the fore as if carrying a small child. But the more I look at this, the more I think the background figure is attempting to hide the other, as if sneaking a large flask into an inner coat pocket.

Look at their faces. Or at least the indentations that replicate human faces on each figure. The one being held has almost no countenance. Perhaps a shadow for eyes and a grayish blob to the left that could be a distorted mouth caught midway into a cry or a song.

The standing figure clearly has two wide eyes. See there, the white in the cacophonous cloud of red and brown. But her neck is askew as if she’s being caught up by whatever or whomever she is holding.

[bell chimes]

Six. “Self-portrait”, 1970.

Mangakāhia painted herself in the guest room of Atieno’s home in Cornwall. You can see her wardrobe and a coat rack over her shoulder, and beyond that a window, looking out over the cliffs where she often dove. I’m particularly struck by the slight mark atop the cliff. It is not a tree.

Look at the mark atop the cliff. It’s not a tree, is it? Is it a person? It is.

I think it is. I think it is Atieno. Based on the recordings I heard, it does not seem likely that Atieno ever liked diving, so it seems strange that she would be on the clifftop overlooking the sea.

Look at Mangakāhia’s face in this painting. Study her attitude, her expression. Study it with whatever consideration you can muster. Is that a smile, or a grimace, or a smirk? Does she know something you do not know? I think I know, but I’m wondering if you do.

Her eyes are not smiling, are they? Are you replicating her facial expression on your own face as you study the image? What is the shape of your body? How is your back? Are you breathing? You should remember to breathe.

[bell chimes] [tape recorders turns off] [ad for the Patreon, I transcribed it at the bottom of the transcript] [tape recorder turns on] [bell chimes]

Seven. “Claudia Atieno with Cat”, 1974.

This was painted two years after Atieno’s death, so I’m not sure if Mangakāhia started it earlier and did not finish until 1974, or if she painted it from memory. She began with the realistic portrait of Atieno’s head, hair, and face, her long braids and narrow lips. But as our eyes move down the canvas, we see a rather shapeless body wearing an almost iridescent blouse. The cat, per the title, looks more like a pile of candles melting down Atieno’s spiraling legs.

This painting is based on Atieno’s “Self-portrait with Cat”, which was unfinished at the time of her death. That painting was on display in the Ulster Museum in Belfast more than 10 years ago. A letter from Mary Breathnach at the museum suggests the painting was donated to them by the sculptor Pavel Zubov.

I met Mangakāhia once, in 1978. I was a student and I had the chance to interview her for a paper I was writing. I remember seeing this painting, “Claudia Atieno with Cat”, and I wanted to know about her relationship to the famous painter. Mangakāhia clearly did not want to talk about Atieno. I was made to understand that very quickly. I regretted asking her the moment I finished my question, but Mangakāhia sighed and said, “She denied ever painting that picture, so I just painted it myself. If she didn’t want to put it into existence, then I would put it into existence.” Mangakāhia added after a long pause: “She hated cats, and I hated her for it.”

Look at the semblance of a cat on the semblance of a lap in this painting, and tell yourself what it means to love something.

[bell chimes]

Eight. “Horopito Number 2”.

In 1980, Mangakāhia returned to Aotearoa from Plymouth. I was living in the former United States at the time. I had paused my career in art history to take a research and technical writing job in a secluded area along the Chesapeake Bay. I did not even know she had returned to her home.

It was in 1982 that I learned she was painting again, and knowing this made me want to resume my own studies. It took some effort, but after a couple of years, I found my way out of my contracted job. I had no money, but I met a cargo pilot in Philadelphia who was able to fly me home. It took a few stops over a few months, sneaking me into normally scheduled routes, but I made it back.

Mangakāhia had lived in a cottage near the sea not far from my own home. I was able to convince a neighbor to let me in, after I told her I was planning to reopen the Karikari Gallery. Every painting in her home, dozens of them, were of Horopito shrubs. Before I had left for America I had seen some of these in galleries, I even bought one.

Look hard at the leaves in “Horopito Number 2”. Just a simple bush growing at an angle from the side of a hill. Nothing else except a flinty sky and a splash of green grass clotted with mud. Two of the leaves, just left of the center, have perfect circles chewed from them by beetles, who seem to worship only hunger and geometry.

The Horopito is neither stunning nor unique. It is simple and ubiquitous, and here Mangakāhia has found true beauty in the mundane. Like Atieno’s 1968 “Stapler”, Mangakāhia captures near photographic realism in acrylics. And at first glance, the painting is dull and innocuous. But it is in the action of painting and the moment of viewing that the artist and the patron perfectly communicate.

Follow green lines as they thicken into violet, and then pink, then orange, then mauve. Feel your head tilt to the angle of the hill. Do you see any people in this painting? Do you feel any people in this painting?

What senses are you ignoring? Are you letting your eyes control you?

[bell chimes]

Nine. “Horopito Number 4”.

This is from my personal collection. It usually hangs across from my sofa. I will return it to my wall at the end of this month, when this exhibit closes.

We will drink tea together in my living room, she and I. We will look at the painting with its blues and teals and simple expendable plant life, as you look at it now.

Examine the missing patch of branches in the lower right, likely eaten away by an animal, or possibly never grown. Or perhaps just damaged in a flood. There are lots of reasons for visual imperfections.

What do you think happened to those branches? Ask yourself that. Just as I have many times. Just as my wife asked the first day we looked at this painting together. But never answer it, it is unimportant.

When this painting returns to my home, I will mostly not look at it. I will know it is there, every day and always, unlike an actual Horopito.

Go home. Have some tea if you have tea. Have it with someone you love, if you have someone you love. Live your life knowing it is there and does not need your eyes. It does not need your critique. It only needs to know it was seen by you.

A year from now, ten years from now, think about “Horopito Number 4” and try to remember its colors, blues and teals. A missing set of branches in the lower right.

Do you see? Touch your hand to your own hip and know that it is still there. Ball joints and ligaments and sinew and skin. How do you walk or dance, or stand, or sit? Ask yourself that. And breathe.

While I was in North America, I received a letter from a former professor, letting me know that Mangakāhia had passed away in her garden. She had become reclusive in her later years, and her body was not found until nature had reclaimed most of it. I viewed this letter as a call to escape, or rather, as confirmation that my plans to escape were correct. There is more talent than celebrity in the world, and many complex artists are left out of our narratives.

Her resentment of Atieno made Mangakāhia a better artist, but I think it prevented her from showing the charisma required for international recognition. I cannot make the world pay attention to her works, but maybe I can bring her the respect of her home land. Her paintings are still hers, but I will keep them safe in this gallery. They would not last in her house, as it has lately fallen into disrepair. My last visit there was a year ago. I found only a cat. I tried to feed it, but it drew blood and ran away.

[tape recorder turns off]

“Within the Wires” is written by Jeffrey Cranor and Janina Matthewson and performed by Janina Matthewson, with original music by Mary Epworth. Find more of Mary’s music at maryepworth.com.

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