Robin Maconie: Absent Friends

Greg O’Brien has written a splendid new book on Graham Percy, the versatile New Zealand artist who died in 2008. Designer of the logo for Bruce Mason’s End of the Golden Weather, Percy made his name in New Zealand as a stylish creator of sixties art deco title pages and illustrations, and an enduring reputation as a distinguished illustrator of children’s books in London. Published by Auckland University Press, the book launch in Wellington on 3 February was hosted by O’Brien’s former employer The City Gallery, in association with a sneak preview of a forthcoming touring exhibition of original artworks, poignantly offset by a small accompanying display of austere photographic meditations by the artist’s partner Mari Mahr.

A book launch resembles a wake at which old friends, members of the family, supporters and hangers-on, many of them dressed in black, noisily assemble in semi-darkness to meet and greet, sip wine and nibble wafers, under the watchful eye of a hired celebrant. Greg O’Brien already has excellent credentials as a poet, curator, and author of previously acclaimed surveys of New Zealand art for children. Describing himself as a latecomer who first became aware of Graham Percy as a former contributor to the School Journal, O’Brien confessed only having discovered the stunning range and variety of Percy’s portfolio as the unexpected outcome of pursuing his interest in the surreal photography of Mari Mahr.

What the author said seemed strangely calculated to appease friends and relatives, formalize the rite of passage of a new initiate to the extended family, and acknowledge the obligations of a privileged confidant to preserve family secrets. The unspoken assumption on all such occasions is the question of ownership: who gets the spoils. With relief at the launch of the first ever published study of Graham Percy’s art comes nagging guilt that the artist was not given sufficient recognition during his lifetime, along with lurking suspicions firstly, that he was not properly recognized because among artistic circles in New Zealand he was merely a “commercial artist” and not a fine artist, and secondly, because having opted to spend the greater part of his life outside New Zealand, he was no longer “one of us”.

So who “owns” Graham Percy? The question is vulgar but that is how New Zealanders think about famous dead people. With the publication of a book, the artist’s identity is officially canonised. He is now acceptable as “one of us”. We “own” him. And, being dead, it is proper finally to acknowledge him in public and celebrate his memory without the pain of ever having to give due consideration to his legacy of quirky, brooding, enigmatic and haunted artworks as images of a peculiarly local and national sense of isolation, loss, and sublimated accusation. That is all taken care of. We no longer need to think about such things.

It is a great book. And whatever an author or reviewer might say, the artworks on display continue to deliver their own message, in slightly disturbing images of intense and knowing childhood, often reminiscent of Edward Gorey, or fixing the viewer with the unsettling gaze of the bright-eyed aliens of John Wyndham’s Day of the Triffids. Anyone who has lived for a long period away from New Zealand, in London or New York, will instantly recognize persistent themes of Graham Percy’s art that tell of melancholy disconnection, loss of identity, and a New Zealand reinvented as an eighteenth-century Erewhon locked in a perpetual time warp. In association with the book launch O’Brien has created a giveaway poster for schools featuring the powerfully iconic image of a person bent over with the burden of carrying a giant kiwi on his back

Greg O’Brien, A Micronaut in the Wide World: The Imaginative Life and Times of Graham Percy. Auckland University Press, 9781869404703, $59.99.

ENDS

© Scoop Media