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AROHA
24 February - 17 June 2007
James Ormsby works from the Waikato Museum collections
Drawing is the medium which has been the blood of my life…
I felt very strongly that I had ancestors.
I wanted to pit myself against the past
and I also wanted to go forward.
I wanted to use objects…
but I also yearned to have my feet in historical drawing.
Jim Dine b.1935
20th Century American artist
A great love of history and ancestry has assisted in making the works of James Ormsby. Important signifiers of cultural assimilation are at play within the work allowing his Maori and Pakeha selves to interact.
Ormsby has a readily recognisably clean and direct style of communicating his ideas. His closeness to nature enables us to understand some of the ideas that are layered in to his sometimes-complex set of visual signs.
About the artist
James Ormsby b.1957
NGATI MANIAPOTO, TE ARAWA, WAIKATO, KATIMANA (Scotsman)
James Ormsby is currently based in Hamilton. He has been actively involved in art education to tertiary level and was artist in residence at Southwell School in 2003. Ormsby has an extensive exhibition history and is currently represented by Whitespace in Auckland and many major collections throughout Aotearoa. The adjacent Jim Dine quotation was selected by Ormsby to give us some understanding of his own art practice which pays close attention to drawing and painting in great detail.
Artist’s Statement
These specific works are an attempt to depict the human condition – aroha (love); also the appropriated/authentic, the global/local and “Taonga”. Large Drawing #5 references: Motherly love, birth, waka, taonga, Bernardino Luini (c.1520) figure, and tukutuku. Large Drawing #6 references: Mature/expanded love, death, waka, artefacts, Jacopo Amigoni (c.1750) figure and raranga (weaving).
I’m wary about these large symbolic drawings being too easily/quickly read in a denotative manner. Perhaps like scripture, my marks are actually connotative.
James Ormsby 2006
