Artist Statement:
This series is based on the concept of postcards.
From the earliest days of European exploration to the South Pacific, draftsman and surveyors made images of new lands and its population. The purpose was to make records, and later, to use as advertising material to encourage colonization.
The earliest imagery (1700’s) was a kind of bold anthropological study – posing natives – or dusky maidens - on exotic shores (Abreast of the situation); and later, (1840) much distilled imagery, issued by the New Zealand Company to entice future colonials without frightening them.
But what if the colonials could have sent postcards home, in those very early days? (Honeymoon at Viagra Falls), -they didn’t realize New Zealand would be such a hard place to settle. British missionaries urged Maori to act like good Christians and become ‘upstanding citizens’: (Make yourself at home), while the colonials ran wild (Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?), delighting in their new found freedom.
There is an interweaving of time in this series. The works speak of those early days but also reflect on the far reaching effects of colonization. Spanking the monkey – (every now and then he’d take the monkey down off his back and give it a jolly good spanking).
The use of sexual connotation is an important factor in relaying a view on colonial New Zealand. Fond memories. In 1954, as New Zealand began to advance its unique identity, The Mazengarb Report moved New Zealand culture back toward Victorian moral high ground. The report’s effect on our culture endowed a ‘legacy of prudery and secrecy about sexual matters’1. At the time, a European visitor to NZ remarked that we were a perverted nation – he suggested that it is as if sex does not exist to New Zealanders, yet, obviously, it lingered behind curtains and closed doors.
These works provide new avenues for exploring New Zealand’s historical record and reflect, in part, the material culture of tourism and identity unveiled - Greetings from New Zealand – ear muffs. We send postcards as a memento of a new experience, and also as an enticement or to taunt: Greetings from New Zealand, Wish you were here…
Sally Papps 2006
1. Sandra Coney in Standing in the Sunshine
