At the New Zealand Portrait Gallery in Pōneke currently hangs an enormous New Zealand flag upon which Melbourne-based Aotearoa artist Richard Lewer has painted the words: “To have a future I must reconcile with MY past.”
In 2023 the programme ‘Aotearoa New Zealand’s histories/Te Takanga o Te Wā’ was introduced into schools and kura. History is a curriculum many have criticised as insufficient, not to mention Eurocentric.
Kirikiriroa Hamilton born and raised, Lewer feels going to school in the 1980s he wasn’t so lucky. So - as a painter who has often dealt with real life stories and difficult subjects - he decided to tackle a topic central to where he grew up.
