Hotere has often been an outspoken critic on issues of Maori identity in the visual arts. He has stated: "I am Maori by birth and upbringing. As far as my work is concerned this is coincidental." Earlier this year he said about current arts funding policies: "If you support an artist just because they're Maori you end up with bloody useless art. The only reason to fund art is because it's good, anything else is just hiding yourself." Hotere has been a profound influence, both through his work and his attitudes, on a younger generation of New Zealand artists, both Maori and Pakeha.
- Lara Strongman, Curator of Fine Arts


Hotere by Hone Tuwhare

When you offer only three
vertical lines precisely down
and set into a dark pool of lacquer
it is a visual lind of starvation

and even though my eyeballs
roll up and over to peer inside
myself, when I reach the beginning
of your eternity I say instead: hell
let's have another feed of mussels.

LIKE, I HAVE TO THINK ABOUT IT MAN.

When you stack horizontal lines
into vertical columns which appear
to advance, recede, shimmer and wave
like exploding packs of cards
I merely grunt and say: well, if it
is not a famine, it's a feast

I HAVE TO ROLL ANOTHER SMOKE, MAN.

But when you score a superb orange
circle on a purple thought base
I shake my head and say: hell, what
it this thing, called love

LIKE, I'M EUCHRED MAN, I'M ECLIPSED.



"There are very few things I can say about my work that are better than saying nothing."

One of eleven children, Hone Papita Raukura (Ralph) Hotere was born in Mitimiti, Northland, in 1931. He was educated at Hato Petera College and Auckland Teachers' College, before moving to Dunedin in 1952 to specialise in art.

After a spell in the Bay of Islands as an arts advisor for the Education Department, Ralph was awarded a New Zealand Art Societies Fellowship to study in London at the Central School of Art in 1961. His time in England proved to be pivotal to his development as an artist. With the art world caught in a wave of general upheaval, which witnessed the advent of Pop Art and, subsequently, Op Art, Hotere found himself both influenced by the new movements and, as an outsider from New Zealand, at enough of a critical distance from what was new andtrendy in British art to develop his own distinctive style.

Returning to New Zealand in 1965, he began to focus exclusively on his artistic career. Before being awarded the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship and moving to Dunedin permanently in 1969, Ralph had two important solo exhibitions in Auckland: Sangro Paintings and Human Rights (1965) and Black Paintings (1968).

During the same period he also struck up a relationship with the New Zealand literary world, publishing four drawings in Landfall 78 and designing the cover for Landfall 84, which was to come to full fruition in subsequent years in collaborative works with New Zealand poets.

In 1979, he used his friend Hone Tuwhare's well-known poem Rain to produce Three Banners with Poem, for the Hocken Library. The public appeal of this, and similar works is tremendous: the 1997 exhibition paying tribute to such collaborations, Out the Black Window, opened at the City Gallery in Wellington to an impressive 1200 visitors on the first day.

In 1994 Ralph received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Otago. He received one of the ten inaugural Icon Awards from the Arts Foundation. In 2006 he was awarded Te Taumata Award by Te Waka Toi recognising outstanding leadership and service to Māori arts.

Ralph Hotere's work is represented in every major public and private collection in New Zealand and in art museums throughout the world.

He was awarded New Zealand's highest honour - the membership of the Order of New Zealand - in the New Year Honours 2012.

Sir Ralph Hotere lives in Port Chalmers, Dunedin

http://www.thearts.co.nz/artist_page.php&aid=17&type=bio

Website accessed 25 January 2012