Wobbly, like the natural earth

AS A BOY AT A TYPICAL 1970S’ SCHOOL uniform-wearing, single-sex, sports-mad, culturally ignorant high school, in a then typically insular region that was happily demolishing its art deco heritage, I visited a touring exhibition by Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser.¹ His work, like the art room haven I was discovering at school, was full of light, colour and energy. Hundertwasser’s work and that art room² were both retreats from the reality of our dreary built environment and windows into a wider world of what could be. We all dreamed of fabulous possibilities in our youth but, of course, a lot of that is beaten out of us by schools and practice and life in general as we become human resource units in the service of capitalism. But I still have a copy of the small, black-jacketed book³ that accompanied the exhibition, the interior of which opened up a world of freedom and possibility.

Hundertwasser lived here in Aotearoa from the 1970s onwards, after arriving on his boat () to check on the touring exhibition. He pretty much stayed, although continuing to travel back and forth and around the world, working – and that’s what bothers me about that flag: the big bisecting diagonal.