Hocken Gallery curator Natalie Poland with Rain, by
Ralph Hotere, yesterday. Photo by Craig Baxter.
Five metres of rain fell in Dunedin yesterday.
The 5m long triptych Rain, by Ralph Hotere, was
installed in the Hocken Library foyer after a lengthy
restoration project.
The work was inspired by the poem Rain, by late Kaka
Point poet Hone Tuwhare, who was a close friend of Hotere's.
Hotere was the Frances Hodgkins Fellow at the University of
Otago in 1969, the same year Tuwhare was the Burns Fellow at
the university.
The work was commissioned by the university in 1979 and hung
in the former Hocken Library, now known as the Richardson
Building, for nearly 30 years.
It was taken down in 2007 for restoration by Auckland
conservator Lydia Gutierrez.
"It turned out to be in worse condition than we originally
thought," Hocken pictorial collections curator Natalie Poland
said yesterday.
"It was like a wind tunnel in the Richardson Building and it
flapped about, which weakened the bottom of the canvases.
"There were also wires across the face of them, which caused
some paint loss where the wires had touched them," she said.
"The binder had disintegrated, so the paint was like powder.
"We were careful not to overdo anything. We only retouched
where there was paint loss. We just stabilised the work. We
haven't enhanced it in any way."
The restoration of the three canvases, which Hotere seasoned
by leaving them outside in the rain, included encasing them
in 70kg of perspex.
"You can get up and close to it now and see it from the back,
which is quite interesting. The canvas was unprimed, so the
thinner paint comes through it," Ms Poland said.
"There was a wine ring on one, which we had a bit of a
discussion about and decided Ralph must have made that while
he was making it."
Rain will be on display at the Hocken Library until February,
in conjunction with the "Ralph Hotere: Zero to Infinity"
retrospective exhibition.
A reproduction of the work will also be installed in the
Richardson Building at the end of the year.
Hotere turned 80 on August 11.
Tuwhare died in 2008, aged 86.
- nigel.benson@odt.co.nz
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