Surely, Jim Geddes was speaking in a bit of enthusiastic hyperbole when he proclaimed in the local newspaper that Edward Bullmore was perhaps one of New Zealand's most important artists and an overlooked one at that. Impossible! How is it that most Southlanders and even those in the arts community are perhaps at best vaguely aware of this tremendously talented native son of whom great accolades world wide were and still are proclaimed?
Hailed as the star of the 1965 Second Commonwealth Biennale of Abstract Art, Bullmore had work hanging along side Dali and other luminaries in the Surrealist movement in London. Filmmaker, Stanley Kubrick so admired his work that it featured in "A Clockwork Orange". Yet, in spite of such accolades and success, Bullmore longed to come home to a New Zealand that was not ready for his surrealism. It's not difficult to fathom the disappointment he must have felt when his first exhibition at the Barry Lett Galleries was panned by the New Zealand Herald art critic. It would have been particularly perplexing after having won acclaim outside the borders of his homeland. Bullmore then sank into relative obscurity while teaching in Rotorua. He died at the relatively young age of 45 from Paget's Disease.
In A Surrealist Oddyssey, the exhibition at the Eastern Southland Museum in Gore, I am struck immediately by the tension present in his earlier works. In The Temple Rebuilt, for example, the assumed serenity of a New Zealand style church is stretched with ethereal finger like tree branches straining into the sky and down towards the church yard. Three works that use his wife, Jackie, as model are likewise stunning, but unsettling. In one, her nudity is almost in your face as she demurely stares into a fantastical surrealist world created by Bullmore. The other works in that room proclaim a tension of which Bullmore was masterful, including works that illustrated his growing angst about the threat of nuclear holocaust and about death itself.
The tension of the earlier works continue with the visionary brilliance of his latter body of works in the next gallery. Here, as part of the Hikurangi and series, we witnessed shaped paintings from canvas expertly stretched over unusual found items including chair frames; others display stuffed, ripped, and stitched canvas; and ultimately bold, yet delicate works in the Astroform and Icon series emerge, some of them out of a then fairly new medium of fibre glass. We witness work resembling jewels, and gladly view a more light-hearted side of Bullmore in sculpture crafted out of cross-sectioned arms and legs of chairs and bits of taut painted canvas.
I vow to return to Gore to revisit Bullmore's exhibition. The second visit is worthwhile, almost incumbent. This time I treat myself to the Bullmore TVNZ documentary available for viewing in the first gallery. I am immediately struck by the great pride displayed by Jackie Bullmore and their adult children over his artistic brilliance,. I also sense the sadness over his descent into obscurity upon return to New Zealand. A prophet not honoured in his own country?
So what is my response? I want to learn more about Bullmore. I've purchased the book Edward Bullmore: A Surrealist Oddyssey by Penelope Jackson which accompanies the national tour. A worthy read. I also want to deeply consider how his work may now influence my own creative philosophy in my own arts practice. How can I likewise cultivate clarity in my own artistic vision. I also hope that, somehow, his story will compel me to stop to mindfully consider other artists' labours. I want to be careful to not dismiss other's works manifesting a direction or vision that may not be comfortable for me. Is that what happened to Bullmore? I wish to avoid having an impenetrable attachment to artistic safety in my works and in other's as well. Edward Bullmore, a remarkable son, indeed. I think I'll go back and see Edward again. He's worth it.
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