Michael Reed

A BIG WALL PROJECT

Cultural Vulture is based around my tourist experiences in Rarotonga, The Cook Islands, a popular pocket sized paradise with close connections to New Zealand.

My fleeting impressions are brought together to give a sense of place; the pulse of bright colours and rhythms of local life that run parallel to the continued entrance and exit of the tourist, the economic mainstay of Rarotonga, a blessing and potentially, a curse.

Cultural Vulture began with a long admired Cook Island carving in storage at Canterbury Museum, a fragment of a Rarotongan God Stick (ex Oldman Collection). This prompted me to research the influence of early Christian missionaries on the demise of men’s woodcarving in the Cook Islands, a disapproved practice that produced “heathen effigies.” The trail then led to a portrait of the Reverend John Williams of the London Missionary Society, posing with his trophies, assorted cultural plunder. The portrait was studio- painted in England, complete with a ship-deck setting and a South Pacific background of coconut palm trees. Amongst the curiosities at the feet of this early cultural vulture was a Rarotongan God Stick.

Returning from a visit to Rarotonga in 1999 I began to think about the possibilities of a large-scale art piece that considered the tourist experience, the surface skim, the cultural exchange.

In early 2004 I returned to Rarotonga to gather more imagery and to revisit the concept. This visit changed content and technique. Passages of time became a link for the glimpses of tourist and local experience, something of what is behind the postcard views.

The completed work, nine 1x7 metre paper scrolls with additional panels of canvas and synthetic, combines drawing, painting, screen-printing, stencilling, digital printing and photography. The format loosely references the large-scale tapa/bark-paper heritage of Polynesia.