Cultural Identity and the Art of Robyn Kahukiwa and Sally Morgan

Abstract

The paintings and prints of Robyn Kahukiwa and Sally Morgan, and particularly those which are concerned with the land in relation to its human dimension, are examined in this thesis in order to explore ideas of cultural identity. The proposition of this thesis is that the work of Kahukiwa and Morgan functions not only to assert the artist's cultural identities, but also attests to their search to discover these The examination of their work is undertaken within the contexts of postcolonial and postmodern discourses and in relation to the art milieus of New Zealand and Australia, and also to Maori and Aboriginal traditions, histories and practices It seeks also to position Kahukiwa and Morgan as women artists within these discourses, examining how gender figures in and through their work, and how their images inform whom they seek to address. Kahukiwa and Morgan are artists who are contemporary, indigenous, bicultural, urban and female, and their work is hybrid, mixing traditional and contemporary, indigenous and western. Their work is discussed in terms of the similarities, but also the significant differences, not only between the practices of Kahukiwa and Morgan themselves, but also between Maori and Aboriginal cultures, and the colonial and postcolonial situations and art milieus of New Zealand and Australia. In Volume 1, I consider the social, political, geographic, historic and cultural contexts within which Kahukiwa and Morgan work. I consider these in order to identity how their work contributes to or complicates concepts of nation (Chapter 1), tradition (Chapter 2), history (Chapter 3) and, therefore, cultural identity (Chapter 4), as they are evolving in recent New Zealand and Australian cultural discourses. There are also chronologies of the artists' biographies and exhibition histories, a glossary of Maori terms, and bibliographies relating to both artists. This analysis is complemented, in Volume 2, by a catalogue of the works of Kahukiwa and Morgan cited in the thesis. Inevitably, through the course of writing this thesis, which considers the possibility and problematic of defining a cultural identity, I have been challenged to question and define my own identity as Pakeha. In endeavouring to understand the work of two artists who identify with their indigenous heritages I have been led to a realisation of the political and social implications of such acts.