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Preparations are being made for the funeral for one of New Zealand's most important contemporary artists.
Ralph Hotere died yesterday in Dunedin aged 81.
He will be taken back to Mātihetihe Marae in his birthplace, Mitimiti on the coast north of Hokianga, after a mass at Dunedin's Catholic cathedral on Thursday.
Fellow Te Aupouri member Muru Walters says they were among a group of young artists brought together in the late 1950s by visionary educator Gordon Tovey to address a lack of creativity in New Zealand schools.
“People got together and used art media as a way of giving a life to some deep thoughts that can be expressed either in painting, drawing or in sculpture. As a result of that kind of absorption, in the relationship between media and person, something new may involve that could be expressed in words. A word called creativity”. Bishop Muru Walters says.
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