Black painting: Red/Green/Indigo

Kei roto i ngā kōrero mō te hanganga o te ao te hōhonutanga o te kaupapa o te wā e whakamārama atu ai i tō tātou hononga ki ngā kaupapa whānui o te wāhi me te tauoranga. Āta whakaaroaro tonu ai ngā ringa toi Māori mō te hōhonu o ēnei kaupapa arā ko te wā kore, ko te wāhi kore, ko te mutunga kore. He tauira pai o tēnei āhuatanga ngā peita a Ralph Hotere, e kitea ai i roto i te pango, te tika mutunga kore.

Ehara i te mea ko te pango i whakamahia ai he āhuatanga tautuhia, tūwāhia rānei, engari he āhuatanga tārewa kē, kī tonu i te pito mata. Pērā i Te Kore me Te Pō, huritaongia ai te tauoranga ngū kei roto i te *Zero Series*, 1969 a Hotere. Kei roto i tēnei mahi e tākirikirihia ai te poka tōrere pango e ngā rārangi tae angiangi he mea poutū, huapae hoki ānō nei he tukituki i te wā hei hātepe e haere whakamua ai, e hoki whakamuri ai, he mea miramirahia e ngā tae o te uenuku, arā, he pānga ki a Uenuku Atua. Ko tā *Zero Series* he kawe i a tātou ki wāhi kē, ki wā kē.

Māori creation narratives offer a rich account of the concept of time and reveal our relationship to wider concepts about place and being. Māori artists continue to investigate the importance of these ideas about the timeless, the placeless and the limitless with reverence. We see this in the paintings of Ralph Hotere, in which black is a ceaseless truth.

The artist’s use of black does not define a place, but rather a suspended dimension that is full of potential, of latent being. Much like the states of Te Kore (the great nothingness) and Te Pō (the perpetual night) we can ponder latent being in Hotere’s *Zero Series*, 1969. In the work, an abyss of black is broken only by fine vertical and horizontal lines of colour. Like the demarcations of time, or beats in a sequence of thought that both advance and recede, the lines are highlighted by colours of the rainbow, which can be read as echoes of Uenuku, the rainbow god. *Zero Series* transports us to another place and another time.

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