Wellington artist Hamish Palmer is delighted tonnes of new personalities are emerging from the ground around Dargaville and Ruawai.
Some of the characters Wellington artist Hamish Palmer has found in the humble kumara.
Kaipara kumara growers are flat out harvesting at the moment and even Hal Harding, who wants to build a
kumara icon at the entrance to Dargaville, hasn't time to contemplate the tasty tubers as objets d'art.
But Wellington artist Hamish Palmer is delighted tonnes of new personalities are emerging from the ground around Dargaville and Ruawai to grace the kumara series of paintings, photographs and gallery installations he started producing six years ago.
Palmer has even ensured a worldwide audience for his kumara images by covertly including them in sets he helped paint for the movies King Kong and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Palmer, 35, had a variety of jobs, painting as a sideline, until he began attending the Elam School of Fine Arts at Auckland University seven years ago and graduated with a Master of Fine Arts Degree in 2003.
He said he liked using kumara in his art because their shape made it easy to find characters in them.
He also liked the way kumara were part of the New Zealand story and as a Pakeha artist using them in his work he was absorbing a portion of Maori culture.
Some of the photographs here portray kumara in New Zealand landscapes. "Most of my kumara work since I began in 2000 has been similar to these," Palmer said.
Other photographs show a doorway and sorting machine in the Kaipara Kumara processing plant at Ruawai.
The artist said he had been in touch with the managing director of Kaipara Kumara, Anthony Blundell, over the past couple of years about his kumara art.
"They helped me out with funds for my recent show in exchange for some kumara art for various promotional ideas of theirs," Palmer said.
"We have quite a few ideas floating around about future collaborations like a possible recipe book and calendar.
"I am very excited about this because I am interested in ways that art can be more part of everyday culture and media, as opposed to just in galleries. The concept of artists and businesses joining forces and awareness of potential benefits is gaining momentum around the world."
