Power to Define George Watson

An exhibition by contemporary artist George Watson (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Mutunga whakapapa, Moriori hokopapa), Power to Define examines identity that is both autobiographical and national. Comprising readymades and familial objects of significance, Watson considers Aotearoa New Zealand’s complex settler colonial history and what it means to be part of it.

Four pairs of industrial farm gates mounted on their gudgeons sit poised. A recurring motif within the artist's practice, the gates operate as references to the confiscation, enclosure and privatisation of land. The gates as objects carry with them an inherent desire: to manoeuvre, contain and dominate. Branded ‘bullmaster’ and ‘deermaster’, this role is affirmed, along with that of their owners as masters of stock, masters of land. 

Nearby sits The Master, a photographic reproduction of a picture from the artist's maternal family farmhouse. A lithograph of the 1901 painting, The First Commission, by British artist Margaret Isabel Dicksee, the work was originally exhibited at the Royal Academy. Depicting a scene of pedagogy and hierarchy; a master is tutoring his student, who is also his son, on the art of portraiture. Presented here, however, this image of order and discipline is disrupted by shards of broken glass.

Watson's other wall-based works speak to ideas of mastery, control and containment, too, particularly in relation to the biological family. Three birth certificates belonging to the artist, her son and his father divulge gaps and aberrations which resist the implied order of the official document. And nearby, a photograph of the artist as an infant in her father’s arms depicts her godmother in the shearing shed working as a rousie. Treated as an archival image, the artist’s personal histories are intertwined with wider histories surrounding the family structure and labour relations in rural Aotearoa New Zealand.

In Scoured wool for dreaming eight bales of wool are positioned on the floor of the gallery, the creamy white fibre spilling out of the fadges. Cleaned of excrement, lanolin, and sweat, this type of hot washed wool is most often used to stuff pillows, mattresses and bedding. This brings an implication of purity and abundance however these notions are curbed by the stark realities of industry and extraction.

A title borrowed from a 2009 painting made by the late Robyn Kahukiwa, Power to Define addresses tendencies, systems and structures which endure in this place. Positioning herself within the arc of Aotearoa New Zealand’s history, Watson’s open-ended enquiry prods at deep seated notions of who we are.