Down under the Plum Trees and Quiet Motels

As a wild and free teenager this was my theoretical introduction to the world of sex.

Published by Alister Taylor in 1976, it was controversial and subsequently deemed 'indecent'.

Filled with beautiful photographs by a range of prominent New Zealand photographers including Robin Morrison, Ans Westra and Max Oettli, Down under the Plum Trees, was a no-nonsense, fact based book about sex, sexuality and the law - written for young people, at a time in New Zealand history when sex was never, ever discussed. Especially with young people. All sex between males was illegal. Lesbian sex was not against the law (unless a woman over 21 had sex with a girl under 16). This was because many considered females having sex together as so far fetched it did not need a law.

My eldest brother, Paul bought me the book. He was trying his best to bring up his wild, sad siblings after the sudden death of our art loving mother. He took this task seriously. As a teenager himself, he should have been out having more fun.

I devoured the book and it was formative. Without the valuable information in it, my life would have played out in a completely different way. It also laid a foundation stone for my subsequent legal career advocating for children's human rights. Law enabled me to help young people understand the law, be seen and heard. I am so grateful this book was published.

Cabin Fever by Imogen Taylor

Earlier this year our MFA class visited Imogen Taylor's large, light-filled studio in Henderson. We were given a preview of her latest solo show, 'Quiet Motel'. A couple of months later I visited the exhibition at Whangarei Art Museum. Shortly after that I heard Imogen's mixtape on Radio New Zealand. She casually mentioned her father had been a publisher. Then the penny dropped. Imogen was the offspring of the free thinking and enlightening publisher, Alister Taylor.

Taylor's paintings seem to glow in the dark. They are intimate, strange and some seem almost menacing. Layers of acrylic glazing, over hessian-covered canvas substrates become rich, jewel-like images. At first we are hooked by colour, then abstracted forms, clever composition, surreal, semi-figurative representations of women, and finally food lures us in. The atmosphere is almost voyeuristic. Standing back they are smooth and sharp edged. Moving closer these paintings are roughly textured. Things are not as they first appear.

Before I understood the artist's whakapapa, I felt a weird sense of nostalgic confusion and had flashbacks to New Zealand artists Tony Fomison and Michael Illingworth. Modernism, surrealism - hessian and form. Male artists who were in the outer stratosphere of my adolescence. Peers of Alistair Taylor, Imogen must have been surrounded by their art as a child.

I see these influences and perhaps that is why Taylor's work feels strangely familiar. But she also paints from a queer perspective about the zeitgeist of our times - and this makes her work contemporary. Abstracted representations of people, food and place produced during Covid lockdowns. Forced to come to terms with our own company and the existential fear of the unknown, mixing in society has become dangerous. A quiet motel can be confronting or comforting, provide refuge or release.

Moving through the darkened, violet coloured space felt at once soothing and somehow intrusive. Nocturnal landscapes, sultry interiors, entwined limbs and genitalia greet viewers along with plates of painted food. Sex, food and colour are a heady mix. The title offers a context for viewers' own dramas to unfold - quiet motels, moonlit nights and meals gorged after lusty couplings. Love and hunger, hunger for love.

Taylor is a proud queer painter, advocating for her own sexual preferences as she moves the conversation about contemporary painting and identity politics forward.

Thank you Alister and Imogen Taylor - for shaping and changing cultural mores. Your art opens doors, promotes human rights and has changed lives.