Looking at and Listening to the 2018 Molly Morpeth Canaday Exhibition
Whakatane Museum and Arts Director Eric Holowacz on Art, Answers, and Birdsongs

What is the use of art? Why do we make it, share it, talk about it? Why give prizes like Whakatane's Molly Morpeth Canaday Award for it? 

We are a curious lot, human beings. And the questions we ask—and try hard to answer—can often define us. I like to think that responding to the unknown is an attempt to make us whole, to flex our creative muscles, to verify that we are here.

Maybe it is essential that we keep questioning, re-defining, inspecting, challenging, answering one another. Art and the creative process allows us to reply, reasoned and careful and equally curious. The art we make and share with one another is a reaction to the mysteries that surround us. And there are many. 

Somebody once asked Picasso to define art, and he famously replied that "Art is a lie that makes us see the truth.”

Painting, sculpture, poetry, dance—maybe these are not a direct answer, but a sham, a ruse, an artificial world that humans create to stand for the real one. Our modern condition is certainly filled with simulation and hyper-reality, and an unfortunate plague of untruth. 

But Picasso was speaking not about the misfortune of lies, but of the joy we find in pursuing the truth. I like to think that art helps us do that: it is a hand-made sign pointing us to what is real, cleverly convincing us that there is something beyond the raw materials and gilded frame and lush layers of paint. Something that is worth knowing. 

Nearly 60 works from across New Zealand—traditional, contemporary, provocative, subtle—are now on view at Whakatane Museum. What do these things mean? What lies do they tell in search of the truth? What worlds do they represent? How do we read all these well-crafted signs? 

When Picasso was asked what his paintings meant, he replied: “Do we really know what the birds are singing? We cannot, but we listen anyway.”

And yet, some of us try really hard to figure out the birdsongs, to understand the dawn chorus, to study the peculiar soundwave of the tui. who hasn't found inspiration and pleasant relief from mundane daily life—in a film, a poem, a sculpture, a song. This inward journey is a purely human phenomenon, a kind of thirst from within. It's the mindful itch we have to scratch.

Quite simply, we need art not just to seek the truth, but because it confirms and reiterates our inner humanity. It is the sign that says "me and you, we're human."

It’s impossible, really, to know what the birds wants to tell us. But we are drawn in, and that is enough. From under the canopy of leaves we simply listen, and the soundwave is enough.

The art that surrounds us as we walk into Te Koputu is 99% artificial. Some of it might even be confusing, a trick, a paradox. More than a few objects in the 2018 Molly Morpeth Canaday exhibition are enchanting: calling us to discover undeniable beauty and highly refined aesthetics from first sight. Other objects and ideas have now won coveted awards. Some will provoke thought and skepticism long after leaving the galleries. 
 
A mysterious few works of art contain truths that you or I may never understand. But still, we listen. 

Step inside our galleries, into a forest of interesting birdlife. Let the 2018 Molly Morpeth Canaday 3D exhibition surround you like a dawn chorus. Some of New Zealand's most interesting contemporary artists are sharing their world—not because they want to lie to us, but because they want us to see the truth.  And we do. We find it in a glass sculpture, a ceramic object, a mixed-media installation, a sugar sack tapa cloth.

It's there in our galleries, ready for you to find, in flax and stone and wood. Let yourself get drawn in. Take refuge under the canopy. Talk about the lies, be skeptical or laugh or questions technique and motive. But observe the signs and seek out the truth.

Stop what you are doing, every chance you get, and come here to listen. Hear the birdsongs that are all around us. Allow yourself to be drawn in. And that will be enough. 

Kia whakarongo tō taringa ki te waha o Tāne, e kō i te ata
Listen to the chorus of the birds, singing in the morning.

Eric Holowacz, Director
Museum and Arts
Whakatane District Council