Heart-catching renditions of extinct huia

By LINDA HERRICK


Is there anything more poignant than an extinct species, a creature which is gone forever? In New Zealand we have lost many birds, but wouldn't it be wonderful to see and hear the huia in our forests once more? Instead, we can only look at the bird, last seen in 1907, stuffed, in museums.

Sir Walter Buller, the ornithologist, wrote in 1867, "We heard the soft flute-note of the huia in the wooded gully far beneath us. One of our native companions at once imitated the call, and in a few seconds a pair of beautiful huia, male and female, appeared in the branches near us." And then Buller's companion shot them.

Auckland artist Grant Whibley's new exhibition, Passing Away, is an extension of his earlier studies of extinct birds of New Zealand, but in this series he focuses solely on the huia, with the distinctive different bills of the male and female.

His oil "portraits" are based on studies of the stuffed birds in Auckland Museum, where some have little dark or white beads in their eyesockets. Some have none at all, and yet the "gaze" from the canvas is heart-catching.

Whibley has based the series on McCahon's 1966 Fourteen Stations of the Cross, taking the names of each as a starting point for his own titles which mesh Maori and Pakeha words.

So the first "station" is Whakatau te Mate I: Condemned to Death, and the birds pass through various stages until they reach Toro Nui XIV: Big Drawer, followed by two large works, Ha: Essence and Aranga Motu: Easter Island.

These are far more than portraits, however. Whibley is interested in evoking elements of the mythology and spirituality of the land the birds represent.

"There is a lot more to these images than paintings of dead birds," he explains. "There is a lot going on. I paint the huia, but also the way they cast a shadow - the shadow it is casting over us, as humans, the absence of light, the thin veil between life and death, which is what I look at each time I paint a bird. I have to look at something that has died."

Whibley first studied at Whitecliffe Art School in the mid-80s, then joined Elam in 1991, graduating in 1997 with a masters.

This year, Te Tohu, his spine-tingling study of an albatross, won the $20,000 Norsewear Art Award, and he won the Emerging Artist Award in last year's Wallace Awards.

Life as a painter is not easy economically, and he taught art at Westlake Boys High until six months ago, when he took the plunge to paint fulltime.

He believes New Zealand people identify with the country's native birds, even if we are the children of colonisers who wiped them out.

The gaze of a bird in his paintings possesses an intelligence which suggests qualities we could learn from.

Whibley examines the painting Ha, which means essence or breath, and muses that while the damage has been done, at least "the magic of painting can bring something to life".

Exhibition

* What: Passing Away, by Grant Whibley

* Where and when: Milford Galleries, 26 Kitchener St, until December 15