homeless
My latest painting. Almost ten years ago, Housing NZ (now Kāinga Ora) turfed out longstanding tenants from these houses in Porirua East on the grounds they needed to be earthquake proofed. Boarded up, the houses remained shamefully empty and unmaintained for the next four years, at the very time New Zealand’s homeless population was skyrocketing. There are still state houses just like this all across the country. To tenants rendered homeless as well as those on the waiting list for homes, these boarded up windows serve as a daily reminder that their need for safe and secure homes and communities are not a national priority.
2021
1200 x 600, acrylic with vinyl type on ply.
the family benefit
My first state house painting. Between 1946 and 1991 the Universal ‘Family Benefit’ was paid to all New Zealand mothers for each dependent child under the age of 16. Though nominally a welfare measure, the benefit was effectively designed to incentivise families to have more children in order to ensure a steady supply of workers in the labour-force, as well as encourage families to consume household commodities to keep the wheels of industry turning and men in jobs. In the 1954 and 1957 general elections, the Walter Nash-led Labour Party, in opposition and anxious to return to government, campaigned on a new policy whereby families could capitalise an increased family benefit for the purposes of repaying an existing mortgage or of meeting a deposit on a joint family home. A family that capitalised two benefits could claim about one third of the cost of a new house. Once Labour became government in 1957 many families naturally took up this offer and rates of Pākehā home ownership rose quickly.
2021
1200 x 700, acrylic with vinyl type on ply.
annual income
To workers in post WW2 Aotearoa New Zealand, leisure time was both a physical respite and a reward for hard work. To employers and the state, it was a means of ensuring workers would not only be more productive when they returned to work, but they would spend more of their wages on leisure-associated goods and services like baches, boats and travel, which helped prime the post-war economic boom. Soon advertising agencies were employing nostalgic images of the ‘kiwi dream’ – endless hot, sunny days, neighbourhood barbecues, kids roaming free on balmy evenings – to sell products for banks, mobile phone companies, ice blocks, airlines, soft drinks and beer. So successful was the commodification of New Zealanders’ leisure-time that the price of seaside sections soared, and today the once humble bach is now like any financial ‘investment’. Owners can earn their annual income and more simply by watching the value of their beachside properties rising year on year, without even having to use them. In the meantime, the dream of owning a beachside bach moves further out of reach of ordinary working New Zealanders.
2021
1200 x 900, acrylic with vinyl type on ply.
surplus?
As rental prices skyrocket and the number of homeless has grown to the highest levels ever in New Zealand, many families are now living in emergency housing and motels. This is despite there being, according to the last 2018 census, approximately 200,000 empty or unoccupied ‘ghost’ houses, representing around 10% of New Zealand’s housing stock. Many of these houses are found being advertised for sale on house relocation websites; their owners having determined them surplus to requirements. Once the ‘nation’s pride’, these older state house-like wooden houses are now regarded as irrelevant, even shameful, to their owners. Built to last generations (with regular repair and maintenance), these houses have become just like any other disposable item in our care-less, throwaway culture.
2021
1200 x 600, acrylic and vinyl on ply
a happy home is the foundation of the state
The title of this painting comes from a campaign film created by the New Zealand Labour Party for the 1938 election, featuring first labour Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage and other Cabinet Ministers carrying furniture into the first state house in Miramar in 1937. The voice over says “A happy home is the foundation of the state. Here is a case where you must say “Let Labour Carry On!” Thirty years later, my partner Mark’s parents got divorced and he, his mother and brother moved into this state house in Taita Drive, Avalon, Lower Hutt. Mark has only good memories of living here between 1968-1972; memories that included always coming home to a warm house and playing cricket and rugby on the front lawn with the neighbours’ kids. Mark is now a house painter, and helps me paint the large blocks of colour on these paintings. There’s something ‘meta’ about Mark, the house painter, helping me paint a painting of the house he has lived in second longest in his 60 years
2021
1200 x 1200, acrylic with vinyl type on ply.
where the wild ones live
A housewarming/engagement gift for my niece Stevie and her fiancé Darcy. It’s a painting of their house (nothing political in its messaging). Stevie is a superstar designer who runs @the_wild_ones.co, a business making and selling wild gifts for badass babes, and @viva _la_vulva_nz, selling postpartum products to new mums. I’m very proud of her!
2021
1200 x 600, acrylic with vinyl type on ply.