Graham Kirk
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Artist's Statement Graham Kirk 2004
I was born in Hawera in 1948. Around the age of nine I began making comic strips - collections of short stories with titles like "Buttercup and Butch on Mars," and Olley and Lazy in the Time Hat. The rest of the time I was drawing ships.
I bought my first camera in 1968 en route to England. However, it wasn't until several years later that I began to take any decent photographs. By then I'd seen the work of photographers like Robert Frank, and Cartier Bresson. By this time I was living in Auckland spending most of my spare time taking street photographs with a 35mm camera, and black and white film. I bought an enlarger and learnt how to print. There was a vibrant photograph scene in Auckland in the early seventies, and in1977 I co-exhibited with Paul Hewson, (an old school friend from Hawera), at snaps Gallery. Later I had some work published in Photo Forum magazine.
Towards the end of the seventies I decided to have a go at doing a comic strip again, using the camera as a tool, and drawing directly with a brush from a projected negative in my enlarger. Letratone was used for tone.
I invented a character called Dick Sargeson, an intrepid photographer working for World Pictures Agency, now semi-retired in New Zealand, but soon caught up in new adventures working for the Daily Mail in New Plymouth. The Dioxin Man character, (born out of a chemical spill at Ivan Watkins Dow), was incorporated into the Dick Sargeson strip, which ran for three years in the Listener in the eighties.
In 1988 I had an exhibition of panels from the comic at the Govett Brewster Gallery. These took the form of air brushed gouache on paper. (I had been experimenting with an air brush as a means of putting down flat, even colour for comic strips). Seeing the individual panels done on a larger scale prompted me to make them larger still by switching to acrylic on board. About this time I was considering doing a series of paintings of Hawera, my old home town. I began taking photographs of the place, (and the water tower, inevitably), but realised that something else was needed. It turned out to be Superman. "Superman and the Hawera Water Tower," followed shortly after by "Batman and the Catholic Church," began a series of "Superheroes in New Zealand" paintings which currently number 76.
By the end of the nineties, the Superheroes were being phased out and replaced with other elements: objects, people, statues etc. From a repertoire of images from newspapers, books, television and my own photographs I would look for interesting juxtapositions. A New Zealand stamp series, (also ongoing), was one outcome, and from my father's W.W.2 negatives, a collection of paintings called "Maadi and Beyond," (most of which can be seen at the RSA, New Plymouth).
The year 2003 marked a move back to the superheroes with "Superheroes in Auckland." These have been painted with cotton buds and brushes unlike the earlier airbrushed paintings.
Superhero Shows:
1991 "Superheroes in Wellingtion" at the Kudos Gallery, Wellington. 1992 "Superheroes in Auckland" at Oedipus Rex Gallery, Auckland. 1994 "Superheroes in Dunedin " at the Dunedin Public Gallery. 2004 "Superheroes in Auckland" at the Letham Gallery, Auckland. (1989 -2004) Around 20 have been painted in Taranaki and other New Zealand locations.
I've never wanted to be a painter in the traditional sense, working from sketches and painting from life. I've always preferred the immediacy of the snapshot image, and there has always been something about the photographic "truth" that appeals to me.
Graham Kirk 13.3.04.
