Notebooks and cards based on the artwork 'Bird Watching' by Robin White.
About:
Bird Watching, February 2011, A set of four screen prints, Edition of 10.
In 1896 local Maori hosted a picnic at a delightful spot beside the shore of Lake Wairarapa. Everyone was invited, Maori and Pakeha, and the happy occasion was captured in a photograph identified as the picnic at Pigeon Bush. The event was held to celebrate the magnanimous gifting of Wairarapa Moana to the government in return for the promise of protection of the lake and its abundant resources.
One hundred years later a reckoning was underway. Broken promises, a degraded wetland environment, the depletion of traditional food resources – it was all being brought to light and, at Aratoi, the 2010 Wairarapa Moana exhibition laid it all out for us to reflect on. I went looking for Pigeon Bush down the Western Lake Rd in Featherston. There was nothing in that quiet spot to suggest that here a very large and diverse crowd of people had once gathered in a spirit of friendship and common interest. What remains is the bush, and the birds.
That was the starting point for the Bird Watching series, with the Wairarapa Moana colonial history replayed in the irreverence of the ‘yeah right’ beer advertising campaign, the bullying takeover tactics of the magpie, the forbearance of our native birds.
