On Site – text by Christine McFetridge

On Site
Text by Christine McFetridge

Long before Cook’s voyage, the islands that form New Zealand remained unmapped for centuries. Located by constellations, ocean currents, luck. Myth and legend form narratives around Antipodean beginnings; indigenous lands heaved up from the sea. The people of the land cultivated quietly under long white clouds, while the ensuing Colonial settlers, troubled by the unknown and ‘a world of reversals’[1], attempted desperately to control what could not be controlled. Cook kept extensive diaries about his time in New Zealand, documenting subtle changes in weather and his encounters with the ‘natives’. Interestingly though, he does not describe the land in great detail; there is no insight about how it felt to be in Aotearoa. What was it like to disembark the Endeavour for the first time and walk upon the land?

After emigrating from Christchurch to Melbourne in February 2013, I have made a few trips back every year to my parents’ home in Tai Tapu. Driving south down Russley Road, the view out of the car windows cuts between the Port Hills in the east to the knotted vertebrae of the Southern Alps in the west. Regardless of the temperature outside, I wind the passenger window down as we pass through Christchurch’s urban sprawl. The air rushes in; deafening, carrying the smell of clipped grass, damp earth, and cow excrement.

Tai Tapu isn’t the place I grew up in, yet the surrounding landscape is familiar and I feel a great sense of belonging to the area. But, at the same time, I’m anxious about this connection to the landscape. Though my ancestors had no part in the cruel application of Terra Nullius to the original people of the land in Australia, they still migrated to a colonised country and took part in the unfair exchange of land for mere goods. Traditionally the Māori people did not even understand the concept of absolute land ownership. Thus, it begs the question: can you ever really own land?

Land is transformed by people. Conceptually, this is explored through the work in On Site in a variety of crucial ways additional to notions of colonisation. The work reveals the way in which industry has an affect on the natural landscape, offering a contrasting experience to that of the Christchurch earthquakes. Further still, the work plays the role of conservationist where photography is used to depict scenes of considerable beauty to demand the admiration and respect of the viewer. The work in On Site seeks to make good on the transgressions of the past.

Ellie Waters’ photographs document sacred sites of the Rāpaki settlement, showing the way nature has been allowed to regenerate and make claim over the interventions of humankind. A tree grows over a hut, supported by Tiki, the first man, and grass swallows up the gravesites of the tangata whenua. Mark Adams’ work looks similarly at the effect of colonisation on New Zealand, seeking to identify a more inclusive relationship to the land. His monochrome images are powerful in their construction, which is almost abstract, to recognise the impact of colonisation on the Māori people; footprints in the sand are left to be washed away by the inexorable tide.

In Lake of Coal, David Cook considers the social and economic implications of the largest coal mining operation in the North Island on the small town of Rotowaro. Altered by the industry, the community is forced to adapt to changes at the hands of figures of authority who ought to know better. By comparison, from the larger body of work Vestiges, Tim J. Veling engages with the period of transition being experienced by Christchurch, specifically Avonside, as a result of the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes. Branches are heaped into a pile, ready for the wood chipper; non-indigenous trees and plant life are being removed to make way for native species. An ‘ethnic cleansing’ of the natural environment.[2]

It is the relationship that artists working in New Zealand have to the land that informs the personal narratives that weave throughout images of the (seemingly) picturesque. Mitchell Bright looks at the various ways people choose to live amongst and off the land. In the tradition of American landscape photography, he engages with a visual language constructed of metaphors to document the lives of those who seek to escape the rapid urbanisation confronting modern-day life.

Travelling to New Zealand is like entering another world. I dread the trip back to the airport. As the plane makes its ascent over the Southern Alps towards the Tasman Sea, I ask myself why I choose to leave the place that feels most like home. Partly the reason is psychological, a further effect of the earthquakes, but also owing to my curiosity about the rest of the world. I’m certain one day I’ll return. Knowing that New Zealand feels like mine, as much as it belongs to anyone else.

[1] Turcotte, G, Australian Gothic, in Mulvey Roberts, M (ed), The Handbook to Gothic Literature,
Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1998, 10.
[2] Veling, T. The Howling Tasman Wind, Terratory Journal, http://www.terratory.org/veling/, 2016