A singular obsession: Bird motifs in the paintings of three New Zealand artists - Don Binney, Raymond Ching and Bill Hammond

Abstract

This thesis advocates for the significance of bird motifs in New Zealand painting, considered through the work of three New Zealand artists – Don Binney, Raymond Ching and Bill Hammond. Each artists' contribution is discussed against particular historical elements of bird imagery in New Zealand visual culture for use in scientific illustration and in the establishment and codification of a 'New Zealand identity'. The local history is preceded by a broader historical context in which the bird as motif plays a significant role and this thesis touches on some such elements and their relationship to and influence on the subject artists. This framework of bird imagery and context forms the basis for Chapter One. Binney, Ching and Hammond are unique in that they, more than many others, have become synonymous with the birds that they consistently paint. Chapter Two focuses on Don Binney’s images of 'big brash' birds set against the Te Henga landscape forms an ideological structure in his art, which fostered the development of a consistent visual language based on the bird as central to the image, and his love of ornithology. Chapter Three considers the bird paintings of Raymond Ching whose near-photographic realism was, in many ways, the antithesis to Binney’s style. Ching focuses on the minute depiction of surface texture and the movement and animation of his subject birds, aligning his painting with scientific practises of recording and communication. Whilst early Ching works show a sole illustrative viewpoint, more recently paintings mark a significant shift towards freedom of personal expression Bill Hammond's hybrid bird/human forms gained recognition in the 1990s, and his work forms the discussion in Chapter Four. Hammond's birds embody the tension between human and animal natures, set against a backdrop of colonialism and cultural/environmental appropriation in the hands of Walter Lawry Buller. The unique contribution of each artist to the visual dialogue between man and bird is both profound and seemingly inexhaustible. While the literature acknowledges the birds in all three of these artists' paintings, there has been little sustained examination of their meaning within a wider framework. This thesis adds in its approach new and significant material to the subject of these artists' most well-depicted – and well-recognised - motif.