Peter Robinson | Boy Am I Scared Eh! 1997
Peter Robinson (Ngāi Tahu) has a large multidisciplinary practice that explores ideas such as identity through the installation of manipulated materials, painting, or even intricate sculpture. His career spans 30 years both nationally and internationally. He was one of the first artists to represent Aotearoa at the Venice Biennale in 2001 with Jaqueline Fraser. He also won the Walters Prize in 2008, the top art prize in Aotearoa.
“Peter Robinson’s work from this period is loaded with symbols that confront head-on issues of our colonial history, racism, prejudice and identities. In Boy Am I Scared Eh!, 1997 the spiralling koru (unfurling fern frond) can also be read as a fingerprint – a symbol of a symbol of uniqueness but also as emphasis to the statement it surrounds, as if to poke fun in defiance. This physical marker of identity is netural, but when ideas of identity enter the cultural realm they become complex, contested and loaded. Much of Robinson’s work during this time considered, critiqued and deconstructed that complexity. The text, ‘Boy Am I Scared Eh!’ references Colin McCahon’s 1976 painting, Scared. As young man McCahon once commented: ‘The force of painting as propaganda for social reform is immense if properly wielded . . .’” ( https://www.aucklandartgallery.com/explore-art-and-ideas/artwork/8541/boy-am-i-scared-eh )