Artist Robin White: Driven by environmental issues. Photo / Supplied
Artist Robin White: Driven by environmental issues. Photo / Supplied
Grace: A Prayer For Peace, directed by Gaylene Preston, is in cinemas now.
Gaylene Preston’s film about acclaimed artist Robin White (Ngāti Awa) is a masterclass in how to make a documentary that aptly reflects its subject. Eschewing explanatory narration, Grace: A Prayer for Peace is, at times, languidand sensual, and, at others, intense and urgent. White is always quietly purposeful as she and her creative partners, first in the remote Micronesian island of Kiribati and later in Japan, make art that highlights shared humanity and asks why we so often lose sight of the need for unity, harmony and camaraderie.
More thematic than chronological, Grace starts during the tempest that was Cyclone Gabrielle as White and Tongan artist Ebonie Fifita make large, moody tapa-cloth works. It’s a visceral but subtle nod toward climate change and environmental degradation, themes White explores through her art.
She is then seen standing in front of her 1979 painting This is me at Kaitangata where she declares, “This is me as a young painter trying to figure out how to paint.” How White figured this out has been shaped by her Baháʼí faith, the years she, her husband Mike Fudakowski, and their three children spent in Kiribati in the 1980s and 90s, and her own childhood fears about nuclear war.
War and peace, like the environment, are concerns that drive White. She speaks freely about how this has been almost a lifelong preoccupation, and on visiting the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, she is moved to tears looking at haunting images of charred landscapes left desolate by a nuclear blast. Similarly, tears flow when she visits Iramoko Marae in Whakatāne as she begins to embrace her Ngāti Awa whakapapa.
White and Preston have spoken of the friendship they forged during the making of Grace, which surely allowed for these moments of intimacy to be authentically captured. This is quiet film-making, but its power to provoke reflection and questioning should not be underestimated.
