Nancy Caiger-We are Waikato

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We are Waikato
Collage on Canvas
300mm x 400mm
$390

Exhibited in the Boston Meditech and the New England Biolab corporate galleries, May to Aug 2004, alongside works form the permanent collection of the Museo de Collage, Mexico.

I live in Hamilton a large small city in the middle of the Waikato Region of New Zealand’s North Island. Waikato is agricultural country and dairy farming is its mainstay. So Hamilton is the archetypal “cow-town”. As the city has grown both in size and prosperity, it has angst about its cow-town image. This collage is my funny-side celebration of the cow-town I have lived in these past eleven years and of its agricultural heritage.

Currently, in the Waikato Museum of Art and History is an exhibition of ancient maps of the Waikato region, entitled “Putting Waikato on the map” I have decided to give this exhibition a different flavour. My exhibition brochure features a reproduction of Rembrandt’s famous “The Carcass of an Ox”

The scenery on the right has three scenes – in the background is a picture of Mount Pirongia with the words “We are Waikato. This is part of a wallpaper image from the Waikato Rugby Club’s [also known as “Mooloo”] website. I have cut out the players from the picture. Only their jerseys remain, appropriately dressing the jersey cows in the middle ground. This scene is none other than Constable’s "Wivenhowe Park” – an English pastoral scene which could easily be in the Waikato. The foreground animals come from “The Bulls” by Paulus Potter.

New Zealanders are rugby-mad. Hamiltonians are no exception. When their home team, the Mooloos win, the city rejoices as Mooloos put Waikato firmly on the map. In the tradition of cartoons, bubbles appear as the bulls exchange an aside with double entendres .of the innocent kind.

King Country is the county next to the Waikato a play on dying for King and Country.

Materials used: Ink-jet print on paper,coloured and pastel paper, art magazine reproduction of old masters, Waikato Museum exhibition brochure, matt varnish.