Sight Lines: Women and Art in Aotearoa is a stunning new book by Dr Kirsty Baker, art historian, writer and curator.
In Aotearoa, women artists, especially wahine Māori, have been unjustly marginalized by art historians. In this insightful book, she endeavours to give them the recognition they so richly deserve.
Featured are 35 outstanding women artists, painters, photographers, performers, sculptors, weavers, textile artists and installation artists who have worked individually, collaboratively and in collectives. Included are familiar names such as Frances Hodgkins, Louise Henderson, Rita Angus, Merilyn Webb, Merita Mita and Robyn Kahukiwa. Throughout the book are many striking images, 150 in all, of the artists’ works.
In addition to her own narrative, Kirsty Baker invited other knowledgeable art critics, writers, and curators to write essays. Through their insightful words, Chloe Cull, Ngarino Ellis, Ioana Gordon-Smith, Rangimarie Sophie Jolley, Lana Lopesi, Hanahiva Rose, Huhana Smith and Megan Tamati-Quennell have made invaluable contributions to her book.
Kirsty Baker did not intend this book to be a complete history of women’s art in Aotearoa. Instead, it winds its way along a path that she describes as fragmented and politicised. This allows the reader to look at and appreciate the art made by women in Aotearoa from many different viewpoints.
Her major thematic threads are how women artists have interrogated their relationship with land and place, how they have pushed against gendered limitations, and how they have used their art-making practice to speak back to the exclusions and limits of art history and arts institutions.
Tracing these threads, which she has woven throughout her book, makes for a fascinating journey. I began by reading the essays about wahine Māori artists. As a pakeha, it gave me an opportunity to view their artworks through a Māori lens and made me appreciate how deeply they have been infused with matauranga Māori.
It also heightened my awareness about how knowledge is transmitted and shared through the generations by Māori artists. Included is the inspiring story of how Rangimarie Hetet, well known as an outstanding traditional Māori weaver, courageously decided to share the tikanga around weaving with Māori outside of her own iwi so that the skills of Māori weaving would not be lost.
Rangimarie Hetet went on to teach ( amongst many others) Maureen Lander, who in turn mentored the four young Māori women in the Mataaho collective, who won a major award in the 2024 Venice Biennale for their stunning contemporary artwork. Were it not for reading this book, I would have remained oblivious to the fact that whakapapa is at the heart of their artworks.
The way we perceive an artwork changes over time. For her posed self-portrait, Margaret Matilda White ( 1890-1910), an Irish woman and one of our first early New Zealand photographers, dressed herself in a Māori feathered cloak and drew a moko kauae (a traditional facial tattoo worn by Māori women) on her lower chin. She may have done this as a sympathetic act of solidarity with Māori, but today, it is seen as extremely inappropriate and an offensive act of cultural appropriation.
A very different approach was taken by Fiona Clark in the 1980s who offered her photographic skills to support the people of Te Ātiawa in their Motunui-Waitara claim.
I found Sight Lines. Women and Art in Aotearoa an absorbing and deeply thought-provoking read.
At over 400 pages long it is a big book, and it is understandable that there was no room to include other noteworthy women artists. such as Ann Noble, a highly accomplished photographer, Dagmar Vaikalafi Dyck, a Tongan interdisciplinary artist, and Colleen Waata-Urlich, a key figure in the national clayworkers’ association Ngā Kaihanga Uku. And there are many others. It would be wonderful if a sequel could be written to also celebrate their achievements.
Reviewer: Lyn Potter
Auckland University Press