New Zealand Environment No.5

New Zealand Environment No.5

Jim Allen’s New Zealand Environment No. 5 is a seminal work in New Zealand art history. Allen, who taught at Elam School of Fine Arts in the 1960s and 1970s, was instrumental in developing a vibrant, local creative scene which embraced the new art practices of the time — performance, installation and multi-media works. With New Zealand Environment No. 5 Allen re-views the landscape tradition that has so utterly dominated the art and cultural products of this country. Far from the dainty colonial watercolours of Charles Heaphy, or even the titanic, poetic landscapes of Colin McCahon, Allen’s vision of New Zealand is an immersive environment that invokes the industries that have made New Zealand — physically, economically and culturally — what it is.

The viewer enters an industrial structure made from steel tubing and covered in scrim. The ground is littered with piles of greasy wool, woodchips and barbed wire. Nylon fishing line hangs from the roof, and the whole structure is illuminated by the baleful, artificial glow of green neon. This is not the New Zealand of rolling bush-clad hills and pristine beaches; it is a sensory overload. Rather than being invited to gaze with a proprietary air over endless sweeping vistas, the viewer is positioned claustrophobically in a soupy green haze, overwhelmingly perfumed with wool and freshly-cut wood.

Allen uses materials that have a powerful tactile and sensory presence. The artwork becomes an experience that acts on multiple senses, deviating from western art history’s emphasis on the purely visual. It also sits in marked contrast to the landscape images that sold New Zealand as a colonial destination in the 19th century and continue to market it to contemporary tourists; images of an untouched, unspoilt Eden of the South Pacific. Packing a political punch, Allen’s work represents a colonised terrain built on industrial processes and populated by non-indigenous products of colonial enterprise.