Selwyn Ngareatua Wilson (1927-2002) Memorial Collection

18 May, 2009

Press Release (.doc 128 KB)

Press Release (.pdf 102 KB)

Selwyn Wilson, Figure Study, c.1951, oil on card board, 37cm x 58cm.
Whangarei Art Museum
Selwyn Wilson Memorial Collection.

Katerina Mataira ( born 1932 - )  Deep Water,  c.1957,  acrylic on board.
Whangarei Art Museum.
Selwyn Wilson Memorial Collection

Whangarei Art Museum – Te Wharetaonga O Whangarei is proud to announce the negotiated acquisition of a historically highly important collection of 14 paintings designed, to form the nucleus of a dedicated Selwyn Wilson-Northern Maori Project collection at the art museum.

In September last year the art museum initiated a memorial wall to Northland’s Selwyn Wilson as part of the Auckland Art Gallery Turuki! Turuki! Paneke! Paneke! exhibition at WAM celebrating the first exhibition of Maori Contemporary Art in Auckland 50 years ago.

The 5 artists this exhibition spotlighted were Ralph Hotere, Katerina Mataira, Muru Walters, Arnold Manaaki Wilson and Selwyn Wilson.

They were also among the significant artists involved in the groundbreaking Northern Maori Project in the 1950’s and are now considered vanguard artists of the Maori Renaissance, which has since seen contemporary maori art exhibited in the most prestigious museums and galleries all over the world including the Musee Branly and the British Museum.

The late Selwyn Wilson of Kawakawa, is distinguished above these pioneers for having been the first maori student in New Zealand to enrol for fine arts graduate study at Elam School of Art Auckland in 1945. Prior to this era young maori had viewed only traditional culture, and the Rotorua Institute of Art as a pathway to creative self expression. Together in 1945 Selwyn Wilson and Hirini Mead were the first brave (and naïve) young men to enter that pakeha bastion of mono-culture; and those that followed in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s including Arnold Manaaki Wilson and Ralph Hotere changed not only the institutionalised outlook of art schools nationally, but through their involvement in the experimental Department of Education Tovey Scheme changed the role and focus of art curricula in schools forever.

Even more significantly they collectively changed the face of New Zealand art, bravely challenged inherent ideologies of their own maori cultural values, created an entirely new Maori Modernism and brought a fresh Pacific voice to the world stage.

Selwyn Wilson was key to a pivotal moment in our history, not only as an artist and ceramicist, but as a teacher. He was a mentor to many artists such as Ralph Hotere; in Northland he taught art to Buck Nin, Kura Te Waru Rewiri and Chris Booth among others. In 1957 he was awarded the Sir Apirana Ngata scholarship to study at the Central School of Art in London. He was a life-long friend to Garth Tapper, who had entered Elam as a student at the same time, and while Garth was in London on a Carnegie Scholarship to study too, they were able to cement this friendship.

The paintings in this collection are all from his Elam graduate year 1951 and many are titled as his National Art Gallery Award exhibition paintings. They comprise figure studies, still life, portraiture and the nude, as well as some yet to be identified personalities of the period.

The painting Deep Water c.1957 by Katerina Mataira is now also among this collection acquired by WAM and joins other paintings from the period in the art museum collection by other important Tovey Scheme artists such as Selwyn Muru, Para Matchitt, Buck Nin and Ralph Hotere.

The art museum will be mounting a major exhibition on the Northern Maori Project 1950-59 mid 2010 for Matariki.

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