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It’s not one of Rita Angus’s great paintings, but I’ve always had a soft spot for Churches, Hawke’s Bay. ‘Church’ suggests congregation, a united community. But, in the painting, multiple churches are grafted together or emerge from one another haphazardly, suggesting competing views, schisms, a fractured community. One of the churches is a wharenui. As if to echo this doctrinal discord, there’s no ruling perspective at work in the painting. The artist looks at once to medieval painting (before Albertian perspective) and to cubism (its undoing). Faceless people are peppered about, looking somewhat awkward and isolated, like they don’t know where to turn in the visual and ideological clamour. Perhaps those eye-candy colours are deceptive. Is this a happy painting or a sad one—an image of community or alienation, utopia or dystopia? I don’t know.
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[IMAGE: Rita Angus Churches, Hawke’s Bay 1962–3]
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