Art brings recall of home

Helen Marie O'Connell

As tempting as it is to write about recent events - the floods, local elections or Simon Bridges' calamitous interview on Campbell Live last week - I will refrain and talk instead about something seemingly off-topic: art.

In Wellington recently, I visited the exhibition Colour & Light: Impressionism from France & America. Currently showing at Te Papa, it features lesser known works from some Impressionists, including Monet, Cezanne and Renoir.

Having been away two months, the landscapes, light and portrayal of the natural world resonated in a way that brought about an unexpected wave of nostalgia for Whanganui. Perhaps this was an inevitable reaction to being in the concrete-and-glass capital too long, combined with a romanticised memory of this town and its introduced aesthetic of poplar trees and colonial-era buildings ... But more so, it was the play of light on the water and hills that caught me, the subtle rendering of farmland, headlands and lush gardens under broad, tempestuous skies, and, in the distances, little boats adrift in the elements.

Reading the blurb of a Monet painting, describing the artist's desire to retreat from city-life up the Seine to paint, seemed a familiar sensibility in many who come to settle in this town and surrounds.

Accompanying this thought was the remembrance that artists and environmentalists have, in the past, been closely aligned - if not one and the same. Consider William Morris and the Arts & Crafts movement. A preservationist and a prominent socialist, Morris' shunning of industrialisation and return to natural motifs was not simply aesthetic, but symbolically defiant as well.

Through stylistic or thematic rebellion, artists have always been to the forefront of reforming society and culture: think Diego Rivera's murals of the Mexican Revolution, the American civil rights movement with its attendant graphic artists and musicians. Poets also - Garcia Lorca, Pablo Neruda ... Every movement, every revolution has had its creative exponents recording, participating in or provoking change at every level.

I questioned why, with so many artists in Whanganui, there is comparatively little visible and vocal environmental activism here. Do people simply tend to their own gardens, "growing the revolution", or quietly paint their appreciation? Could it result from the public slandering of "greenies" by a certain local politician? Or are environmental issues really less of a concern here?

While the world is in a state of turbulent transformation, Whanganui feels like a safe harbour in the storm. Politically, so much is happening to undermine the rights of citizens and the environment - from the TPPA to the GCSB, CSG to the EEZ, and numerous other acronyms that all stand for National rolling us downhill fast ... Globally, natural resources are being rapidly depleted and climate chaos reigns down upon our TV news nightly.

Leaving the exhibition, I felt inspired to return to Whanganui with a paintbrush and retreat to a studio up the river ... Well, I didn't. We all have voices, talents and means of expression, though - the question is: how are we using them?

Helen Marie O'Connell is a freelance project co-ordinator residing in Whanganui.

Click on the Links:

Monet painting: @ www.arts.tepapa.govt.nz

Exhibition homepage: @ www.tepapa.govt.nz