In Conversation With Roger Mortimer
Sep 05 2022
James caught up with Roger before his exhibition, Hauraki: Northerly Wind which is currently showing at the gallery, until 13 September, to talk about his most significant work to date- a 7.5 meter jacquard weaving.
James: Hi Roger, so we are here to talk about your new work and it’s the largest work you’ve ever done. I thought we’d start off talking about the scale, can you tell us a bit about the scale?
Roger: Yes. It’s five panels and each panel is 1.8 meters high by 1.5 meters and it hangs. The total size would be 1.5 by 7.5 meters
James: It’s a very immersive sounding work. Recently you transitioned to jacquard weaving, which is a sort of a natural progression for your work.
Roger: I think you relate to the characters and to the work very differently at scale and that does allow you to enter into the scenes. I think it brings the vignettes to life. So these are the characters interacting in some form or another. The material is cotton and a synthetic cotton mix, it’s quite robust and is designed as a wall hanging. Traditionally, in medieval times it kept the castle warm, you know, so it has the same effect in the home.My painting surfaces are quite smooth and hard, even though there is texture and light that brings them to life- the jacquard weaving has a warmth to it.
James: There’s a lovely softness to it in the way it sort of hangs and also the way it presents. That was an interesting experience for me, to see your painting translated into weaving.
They’ve managed to produce your signature washes and it’s very close to the painting, but there’s something quite different about it. Your work draws from the past to talk about the present and there’s something quite nice in the way the Jacquard weaving is presented, it feels old world.. It feels antique, but when you look up close, it’s so fine, it’s almost digital. You can see the pixelation and you’ve got that tension of modern and old. Was that intentional or is that just sort of part of the process?
Roger: The imagery, the characters are sourced from medieval manuscripts. The font that I use is old English, it’s a medieval font. The maps are downloaded from the LINZ Marine charts, downloaded from their website, so they’re very contemporary. They’re designed purposefully to navigate the ocean around New Zealand and harbours. There’s that mix of contemporary scientific, showing the depth of the water, the dangers, and there’s that mix with that medieval imagery. So, there is a contemporary and old feel but somehow the characters and the way they’re presented always seem to have a kind of medieval presence about them. They’re cartoonish. They’re a bit naive probably, and yet they have a lot of life in them.
When I was in New York, I came across The Hunt of the Unicorn in the Cloisters which is part of the MET museum. It really struck me that the way that I presented my characters and the kind of the compositional nature of it- the way the foreground on the background operate- I felt lended itself to that style really well. There was almost a natural fit to produce it in a tapestry or in a weaving in this case.
James: This is the largest work you’ve done. Thinking about the perspective, the swatch of land, it feels to me like the largest stretch of land you’ve actually captured from coast to coast. The Tamaki area through to the Coromandel and I guess the scale kind of allows you really to zoom out, but is this the largest sort of stretch of land and ocean you’ve mapped out?
Roger: In the past, I orientated North differently and because of the shape of the islands of Aotearoa I could have quite long horizontal stretches if I moved North to the West. In this work, because of the shape of the land and because I’ve decided to be quite literal in the way that I translate the Marine charts, North is upwards. That means that if you want to have the ocean involved in the map, there are only a few parts of New Zealand that are actually wide enough. You could go across the south island from Banks Peninsula, to Westport, but that would be a large amount of land and I haven’t explored that option. I like to have more ocean involved and that particular stretch from the Tasman with Piha, through to the Manakau Harbour and the Waitemata to the Hauraki Gulf across the Coromandel Peninsula to the Pacific is kind of like the widest body of land in New Zealand that allows that.
I wanted to say something about the fabric because it is an interesting choice. I felt to use fabric because of its history. In the past tapestry- or the hanging of a weaving- in the castle was valued much more than a painting. It has a history and a place historically and in contemporary art, it has a feminist quality. It’s as if sewing and weaving were linked with indigenous and feminist art so for me I mean, I didn’t do this on purpose, but I sort of feel like I warmed to that notion that I’m not doing something that most old white artists would do, you know what I mean? A pakeha artist might do that because we’ve been given the opportunity to look at indigenous weaving, and the beauty of that. I think that informs the art that comes out of this island.
James: I’m going to come back to the composition because we were just talking about that stretch of land and looking at your work we noticed there’s less life in the water in than previous works and the focus is really sort of on the land. Is there any reason for that?
Roger: When there is a lot of ocean to deal with compositionally, I need to put something in the ocean, but here it isn’t so necessary. The other consideration is that it’s almost like the land floats, so it has a different quality. It has something -I don’t think esoteric is the right word- but there’s something other or different about having the land in a kind of floating space. It’s like the sky is crying and the land is bleeding.
James: I think that’s a lovely way of putting it, the palette’s always the same, but it shifted to this beautiful red land, in a very juicy blue.
Just looking at this panel, there are a few anachronisms in your work. You’ve utilized the past to talk about the present and future, and we’ve got these cruciform telegraph polls, which are a modern venture, and we seem to also have these dock boardings and structures throughout and you’ve got these medieval figures throughout. Could you talk a bit about those anachronistic aspects of your work or the symbology of those?
Roger: Well, they muck with the temporal nature, in other words, it isn’t just medieval, but also the landscape that I tend to use, it’s not a city landscape. It might be what you’d see out the back blocks of Port Waikato or anywhere in New Zealand where the land has been denuded and replaced with dairy or sheep or whatever. So it’s kind of like the land has gone through its own apocalypse and when I put in something like the dock, the doc walking track or the boards, or I put in the power poles, which you see on farms, it mucks with the temporal nature of it. Even the trough, where the demons are having fun, looks like a cattle trough with decking and stuff, so it makes it familiar yet, unfamiliar.
I choose the power poles because they have a symbolic aspect. They look like the cruciform for wine, and it is Christian mythology that Dante and these works talk about. They’re also a part of communication, like the power policy, essential to the transmission of energy and the transmission of data and information and communication between one another. That’s a very modern thing and I think it’s a significant thing.
James: You once mentioned to me, in the context of what we’re talking about, that the power poles are broken. They’re hung at an angle, the wires aren’t connected. Is this kind of a lack of communication being communicated?
Roger: I think the vignettes function in isolation somehow too. There is a, a sense of miscommunication or intense communication. I once had this idea, I was building a deck and I thought that would be quite a nice installation, you know, to actually put a deck made of standard decking materials, four by twos; the pine and kwila and you actually build it inside the gallery.
When you go to a gallery, you go to view, you go to view the artwork on the wall or on the floor, but you go there to view. Dock platforms are there to view the land and it’s a nod to Frances Pound’s book Frames on the Land, which was about how Europeans related to the land, how Europeans related to nature. It struck me you know, the parallels between viewing an artwork in the gallery and how we might view the land.
James: There are these characters here who’ve mounted this dock platform in panel two, they’re surveying the horrors around and looking for their fate…
Roger: I think at a personal level, that is like Gina, my wife and myself. We’re holding each other and this chaos and destruction is going on in the world. I mean, there’s also beauty and there are also very positive things happening, but there is a sense of unraveling and maybe that’s what death is for all of us. It’s an unravelling and Gina and I cling to each in that strong westerly wind on that platform.
James: There’s obviously a personal aspect in your work. You’re a feature in your work and elements of your life are often depicted. As well as these timeless existential tales there’s something very biographical for you, in your journeying. How would you kind of describe that?
Roger: I think Dante’s poem The Divine Comedy is quite funny in some ways. It really is funny, I can see a sense of humour and I feel that within the tragedy there is something humorous there…
James: You mentioned your characters are cartoonish and there’s this wonderful tension in your work. It’s sort of very brutal, it’s gruesome, it depicts pretty tremendous things, but there’s a lightness to it in the way you do it and the way you present the characters. It’s a sort of powerful way to talk about these issues and I presume that’s intentional. Is that sort of a nod towards the poem or is that more to do with what you are wanting to do?
Roger: I think it aligns with my particular nature. I think that’s why it fits well with me and that’s why it appeals to me because the way Dante’s gone about creating this poem fits with the way that I would like to make art. I would like to make art- as someone once said- that was equal parts, bleak and fun. I think that I actually find it quite fun, like the scene where that character’s been disemboweled, for example, it’s kind of nice to be able to portray that because I can relate to it. I’ve had my own disembowelment. I had very bad Crohn’s disease and they had to take out the whole colon. I don’t really want to talk about it that much, but I just really want to say that it is personal- as well as not personal. It’s like we all have our cross to carry and that’s why the poem, The Divine Comedy has resonated for so long. It speaks to people in different ways because there’s a truth about it. There’s a truth about the nature of being a human being, that we have to face suffering, that we do go to very dark places and how we respond to those is how we redeem ourselves. I’ve always liked the notion that- it’s a Buddhist idea, I think- but it’s turning shit into gold. It’s transforming through pain and suffering, compassion and love. That is our task.
James: Would you say amidst the horror that there’s a redemptive idea to your work because there are angelic figures and devils, probably an equal measure and your work kind of deals with personal redemption?
Roger: I don’t know if I believe in angels or devils and I may be foolish not to, but I do believe that transforming suffering into empathy and into caring is the only way to go. The bitterness and the anger just destroy you.
James: Look at this chap who’s quietly reading on this platform, he looks very at peace. He’s almost unaware of the horror and sort of the chaos that’s around him. Who is he, what is he reading and why is he at peace with himself?
Roger: In the poem, he’s Peter Damien, he was a revolutionary monk at that time, during Dante’s time in Italy. He was a reformer in the church and Dante held him in high regard. In the picture, in that scene, I think of it in psychological terms, like he’s an observer and I feel like in all of us, that’s a good thing to have, you know. You can be caught up in something, but if you have something of the observer you’ve got distance. He’s got distance on the drama. So at once, you’re participating and at the same point, you’ve got some distance.
James: He’s kind of a more passive figure than some of the others in some respects, he’s taking it all in.
Roger: He’s reading and so I think he’s interested in learning and perhaps he’s aesthetic, you know, a character like, like a buddha or a monk. He chooses not to be in society as society goes.
James: Maps generally help you go from A to B and there’s obviously a dualistic nature of sort of heaven and hell. The map is almost a metaphor for that journey and there’s a nice correspondence with the themes of your work and the nature of maps. So I kind of thought if we just sort of talk about that journey aspect of your work.
Roger: I’m thinking there are dualities- heaven and earth. I think the work has a perspective like Heaven above and Hell below, which is as if the landscape is disappearing into the sky. The other duality is the science versus the emotion or feeling aspect of human nature. I think there’s something subversive about doing that with the map. It’s transforming something which is rational into something, not rational. And personally, I think of my father. I used to watch him drawing. He was an engineer and I watched him drawing plans for sewerage works for our house, for different things. He liked bridges and worked on dams, but he came from that very strong English tradition where the emotions were really put out of sight and what was supposedly rational was the way to be, to think. I think my connection with him has influenced the way I’ve responded to the maps.
James: We were saying there’s sea life present in your work sometimes. Flying fish, sometimes sea monsters, but the ocean’s quiet in this work. You do have these little fish, simple sort of stick drawings. It’s almost like the early Christian sign?
Roger: Yeah, well Jesus is a fish, or was represented by a fish and in the Marine charts, it occurs where there are fish farms. It occurs where there are Marine reserves and the cross out of fish in a Marine chart just means no fishing. So it’s kind of a gate, it’s a bit like the power pole as a crucifix- the cross with the fish is like another Christian reference that happens to occur randomly.
James: It’s kind of like there’s this bleak windswept sort of landscape right across and it also feels like there are no deciduous trees, everything’s barren and stripped back. What’s the mood of the painting with that sort of wind whipping going through?
Roger: I think that’s probably what my soul is like. There’s something about when I lived in Mairangi Bay on the North Shore, the only time I could go surfing was when there was a strong north or northeasterly wind. I used to get so excited. That meant that the next day I could get up and go surfing and there’d be surf, you know? Cause there was no natural swell, but I also feel like there’s a match psychologically with some people. I love it when there’s a storm going on and you’re cozy inside.. I feel that’s a psychological thing, it’s like inside you there might be a storm going on and to feel somehow held in that storm is comforting.
James: There’s a directional quality from left to, right. It’s sort of that trajectory, you’re being relentlessly pushed…
Roger: You could say that was a Westerly wind, even though the painting is called Hauraki which is Northerly wind. If you put an Easterly wind there, it pushes you against the natural inclination to follow how we read, you know, left to right. Maybe it’s Western culture.. that’s how we have been taught to sort of view.
James: Talking about writing, obviously your maps include place names, but you’ve chosen to use Maori rather than perhaps what the maps say?
Roger: For a start, they’re much more interesting. It’s much more interesting to have the Maori name for me, than the European name, because it’s informing me about something that I don’t know about. It’s informing me about the history of the place, the history of this land.
James: There’s a sense in which you subvert that tradition of the Europeans coming and calling everything, new Brighton and little London. You are kind of really honoring the prior history of the colonized island.
Roger: It is a conscious thing to use the Maori names and I think it acknowledges the history and the indigenous Maori who named these places and who lived here before Europeans arrived. I think it’s important to understand and know that and to come to terms with it and as a part of our future, we need to. I think Matariki was such a successful public holiday, I felt like it was about something that happened here. It wasn’t Christmas which always felt a little bit strange, you know? And Waitangi seems to be like it could be rather a celebration day of mourning but anyway…
James: Your work looks into the past to inform the history and puts that onto the self, looking into who you are to inform who you want to be. Looking at the beast of history, looking at the beast of an individual by really understanding who we are, where we’ve come from, the choices we’ve made.
Would you say that’s a fair summary of perhaps what you are doing with your searching or is that kind of more post-structural sort of idea?
Roger: I’m still following my nose and I feel it would be a bit arrogant to say that the idea of consciousness and knowing self or whatever is the way to go. For me, personally, I’ve always been curious about how I deal with misery.
I feel very honoured that you have taken interest in the work and that’s been wonderful for me.
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