22 November 2008
Springbok tour protests stir memories
10 March 2007
By Joseph Barratt: Te Waha Nui Online
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Memories of the 1981 Springbok rugby tour protests that split New Zealand during Prime Minister Rob Muldoon’s era were revived at the opening of the multimedia exhibition Restless in Auckland yesterday.
Prime Minister Helen Clark opened the exhibition and later had a quick chat and laugh with iconic social issues photographer John Miller whose anti-apartheid tour pictures were featured along with works by other Maori and Pacific digital artists.
Clark was herself a subject of Miller’s photographs during genetic engineering protests:
Six of Miller’s photographs were used by Greenpeace in a 2003 billboard campaign to highlight Clark’s defiant resistance to public opposition to GE.
Asked if there was any lingering tension between them, Miller just laughed:
“No, no hard feelings at all. She’s used to me - I have been photographing her for 30 years now,” he says.
Miller, who won a special Media Peace Award in 2003, has been photographing New Zealand’s internal conflicts since the Vietnam war in the 1960s and Bastion Point land rights protests until today’s demonstrations against the Iraq war and government policy on GE.
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“It’s important to remember that in New Zealand things can still go wrong when a government loses its ethical grounding” says Miller.
Fellow photographer, friend and a recent recipient of a living legend award, Gil Hanly, was also at the exhibition opening.
While her work was not displayed - she generally prefers to publish in magazines or books – she has taken a similar line to Miller and she agrees with the importance of having the photographs displayed.
“I think kids have forgotten what it’s like, it’s so important for them to remember.” Hanly says.
Miller spoke about social activism when he first photographed demonstrations in 1969 and the present.
“In some ways it hasn’t changed. Look at the protests over GE and then Iraq - the same dedication is there,” he says.
“What has changed is the technology. Communication used to be really slow. Now information moves quickly and governments are forced to react quicker.
“Protests are internationalised.”
Gil Hanly agrees.
“I think they’re achieving more, and they’re doing it more quickly,” she says.
But she adds that as she gets older she sees much can be done through lobbying and participation.
“Look at [Invercargill mayor] Tim Shadbolt, he used to be on the frontline”
In the exhibition, curator Lisa Reihana has brought together the work of six Maori and Pacific artists who have all developed their work with a political angle.
Besides Miller, the other artists are Brett Graham, Lonnie Hutchinson, Junior Ikitule, Dean Kirkwood and Parekohai Whakamoe.
Presented as part of the Auckland Festival AK07, Restless is on display at the new Media and Interdisciplinary Arts Centre (MIC) Toi Rerehiko Gallery, Newton, until April 21.
Links:
- Gifts from home
- John Miller: Media Peace Award recipient 2003
- Images: New Zealand photographers
- More on the Restless exhibition
