At the beginning of the modern period when the European academies reigned supreme, figurative painting was organized according to a strict hierarchy of genres, with still life being relegated to the lowest rung. Simply rendering an arrangement of objects – flowers, fruits, dishes, books – into paint was not considered an intellectual exercise. In her richly layered practice, painter Ayesha Green (Ngāti Kahungunu, Kāi Tahu) reinterprets historical images and artifacts to interrogate the values, mythologies and systems of power that informed their creation and circulation. Having already looked at, for example, portraits of Queen Elizabeth II, the Madonna and Child, and Marcus King’s 1938 history painting depicting the (imaginary) signing of New Zealand’s founding document, The Treaty of Waitangifor “Still Life”, Green turned his brush to this lowest genre, presenting thirteen large still lifes in his flat, cartoonish style.
In keeping with the tradition of still life painting, Green’s works feature a mix of man-made and organic objects, taking the form of domestic tablescapes clad in lace and arranged with carefully chosen books that allude to the myriad ways of living. framing land in Aotearoa New Zealand. In each arrangement, a different strand of local flora appears, nestled in repurposed bottles, jars and boxes once filled with cream, beer, peaches, craft water, honey. With their familiar shapes and labels, these containers anchor us to the current place and time, where food and drink may rot and curdle but the plastic that held them won’t decompose for a thousand years. Green’s paintings can be considered both modern vanitases and as a commentary on the colonial notion of New Zealand as a “land of milk and honey” which still pervades today but will eventually spoil.
