The wahine whose artwork replaced Winston Churchill
When a row broke out at Parliament in 2021 about the removal of a historic Winston Churchill portrait, little attention was given to the New Zealand artist whose work would replace it.
As the war of words raged – between National’s then-leader Judith Collins and the Green Party – renowned New Zealand printmaker Marilynn Webb was living out her final days in hospital in Dunedin.
Gravely ill, Webb still managed to chuckle about the spat.
Aptly enough for an artist who inadvertently became involved in a brief flash of controversy in New Zealand’s seat of power, Webb was a politically minded trailblazer and feminist. Empowered and inspired by her Māori heritage, she advocated the importance of our connection to the land.
Three years since both her death – aged 83 – and the Churchill portrait stoush, Webb’s five decades of work are about to go on display at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū.
In an exhibition created by the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Marilynn Webb: Folded in the Hills celebrates the Ngāpuhi, Te Roroa and Ngāti Kahu artist’s legacy.
Curated by Lauren Gutsell, Lucy Hammonds and artist Bridget Reweti, the exhibition is accompanied by a bilingual book that includes essays by the curators, together with new poetic works by Essa May Ranapiri and Ruby Solly.
Hammonds believed the time was right for a large-scale retrospective of Webb’s work.
She was best known for her work in printmaking and pastels, while her clever political statements featured in pieces such as Mining Crumble, from 1982.
Webb’s love of the South Island landscape is evident in much of her work, with depictions of Lake Mahinerangi and Fiordland.
Robert Muldoon’s Think Big infrastructure drive of the 1980s, including the Clutha River hydroelectric project, fired up Webb’s creativity, leading to her 1982 work Drowned Clutha Pudding.
She returned to the Clutha for numerous other works, such as Clutha River – Matau – The Landing Place of the Uruao Canoe, 2008.
“I think she's really important, and that was why we felt strongly that it was time to make this exhibition and book,” Gutsell said.
Webb was proud of the decades she spent in education. She taught high school art, and lectured in printmaking at Otago Polytechnic.
A feminist, activist and environmentalist, Webb was ahead of her time, said close friend Marg Sharpe, who now looks after her estate. “Even now, the things that are happening with the Tiriti, she would have been all over that.
“She was very astute, really, and quite political. Her ancestor (Moenga-herehere) was the 47th signatory to the Treaty, and she was always very aware ... very bright, very clever.”
Gutsell highlighted Webb’s enlightened outlook, describing a “practice that over five decades was really concerned with the relationships between land, sky and water, and the connection to whenua (land), and what that means”.
Born in Auckland and raised in Ōpōtiki, Bay of Plenty, Webb was drawn by her whakapapa to the Far North, before arriving in Dunedin in the mid-1970s after being awarded the University of Otago Frances Hodgkins Fellowship.
“She was incredible,” Hammonds said. “From 1970, she was exhibiting internationally for decades, but particularly in the ’70s, ’80s and early ’90s, her work was going all over the world.”
However, not everyone knew who Webb was or had seen her work, Gutsell said.
Sharpe believed her late friend’s New Zealand-wide recognition was overdue.
“[She was] an exceptional wahine with very astute observations of the political process. Her recognition as a Māori female wahine, as a really early artist, is really important.”
Webb’s unintentionally controversial pastel artwork Going Through Fiordland, 2007 was purchased by the now-dissolved parliamentary artworks subcommittee in 2021, for $2250. It was one of four artworks by Māori wāhine that was bought after a deficit of Māori women artists was identified by the curatorial team.
Marilynn Webb: Folded in the Hills is at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū from June 8 to October 13. Lucy Hammonds and Lauren Gutsell will introduce the exhibition with a curators’ talk at 11am on June 8.