Article: Reconnaisance

"Oils Offer Soapbox For Politics"
By Andrea Elderfield
Hawke's Bay Today, 28th August, 2002

Katharine White is an artist with a mission - to inspire New Zealanders to stop genetic engineering, pollution, privatisation and state invasion of privacy. She talks to Andrea Elderfield.
Having grown up on one of the first biodynamic farms in Central Hawke's Bay Katharine White was exposed to bohemianism, environmentalism, politics, creativity, philosophy and an innate sense of right and wrong.
All this comes forth in a torrent in her third solo exhibition, "Reconnaissance", to be unveiled on September 1st at the Creative Napier Gallery, Hastings Street, Napier.
At first the metre-high canvases appear to be classic horse portraits but on closer inspection writing on the bridle reveals her sense of anguish at the Government's plans to lift the moratorium on genetic engineering.
The horse is us and the bridle the things which she feels we no longer have any control over, such as genetic engineering...In many of her oil painted metre-high canvases she uses futuristic barren landscapes, genetically modified children, skulls and headless horses to convey her political message.
A former Eastern Institute of Technology art student, Katharine says everyone has a skill that can be used to stop the patenting of living organisms and the increasing might of the biotech companies from becoming a reality in New Zealand.
"Everyone has a skill of some description that they can use to make sure it does not get shovelled under the carpet. I'm trying to do it my way. I'm using what I know to keep the awareness of this issue out there."
Although she has been highly commended in writing competitions, such as this year's Clean Earth Short Story Competition and the "Fact" Magazine Pen a Poem competition and the Reed Fiction Award, art remains her first love.
"I really believe in art. It's a clear voice above the corruption of Western construct."
She has used all the colour, energy, words and size she can sum up to convey her feeling of horror of "the real world disappearing beneath our feet."
In one of the most poignant of the paintings a small child with a horse-skull head sits on some blue flowers- the only life growing around her- writing with a large pencil. The child is Katharine herself and the painting is based on a photograph of her aged seven but, she says, this child is writing about how she feels about being genetically engineered.
"That could cause a few jokes down the pub, they'll ask if I used to look like that as a child," said Katharine, with a lighter look at her art. Katharine's previous two shows, both held in 1999, were "Deity", which was based on a trip to India and depicted poor Indian children as deities.
The second "Mashtif" (her own word for imaginative) incorporated her sideline job as an animal portaitist into a political message about the privatisation of roads.
"Reconnaissance" will run at the Creative Napier Gallery until September 14.