Reviews and notes

HOTERE, is rooted in the awareness and earthy wisdom of Ralph Hotere.

Ralph Hotere has confronted us with all manner of texture and material, on canvas, corrugated roofing iron, glass, stainless steel, through windows, with light and darkness, No 8 fencing wire, in installations, alone and in collaboration.

To many he is a visionary with his finger on the pulse. Like his art, he is a man of ambiguity, allegory, beauty and complexity. Natural and religious symbols, the contradictions between sacred and secular, dark and light, are underlying themes, which serve the prophetic and aesthetic functions of his work.

It is left to us to turn the key to the door of communication in his works, on rectangular frames of celluloid, illuminated by shafts of pure light flashing through his black, and colour. The film does not view Hotere through labels. And it does not deny the spectator's right to respond, to challenge, to accept, to reject, to plumb the depths, to become involved.
- Merata Mita


Ralph Hotere is New Zealand's premiere modern artist. His modernist
works embody a spirit that is timeless and originates from an indigenous core that acknowledges no boundaries when it comes to creativity.

An elegantly woven documentary highlighting Hotere's works by acclaimed filmmaker Merata Mita, HOTERE is a negotiation of space between different thoughts, different worlds, different views, and different media, which really aren't so different after all.

Rather than being reductive about Maori and indigenous art, Hotere's
transcendency can only be described by a quote from Louis Armstrong, "If you have to ask, you'll never know.
-N. Bird Runningwater, Sundance Film Festival 2002.





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

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