PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland Purchased directly from the artist, c. 1979

ILLUSTRATED
p. 155 Michael Smither, Trish Gibben, Ron Sang Publications 2004

This image was the last of the 'Paintings for the Revolution'. It is based freely on a news photo of the Irish troubles. I used the faces of friends. Tom Mutch has always seen me giving him a bloody eye in this work as some sort of demonic wish fulfilment. About this time he became a studio assistant, wanting to learn to paint. This was my way of saying that painting is often a painful business.

Michael Smither p. 154 Michael Smither, Trish Gibben, Ron Sang Publications 2004

The Paintings for the Revolution series was made up of several important works: St Francis in a Red Jacket, Gifts, Muldoon on TV and Cancer Victim.

Hostages was stimulated by a newspaper image of the Irish troubles. I have used my fellow artists as models. The site of the 'Hostages' painting is the toilet block by the Herakawe Stream in New Plymouth. It has since been demolished.

In the painting, out to sea is a supply vessel for the oil industry's drilling sites at sea. It chugs by. The beach is scattered with my stones, missiles for the protestors.

The hostages are John Francis, painter, Ross Harris, composer, Tom Mutch, painter, and Dave also a painter. I have forgotten his surname.

I have never taken advantage of historical incidents, rather preferred to pay homage to people I have shared time with. I wished to draw comparisons to global events that all of us were touched by.

This is my life, as the observer and artist, involved but still able to put echoes of reality into my work. In a very real sense, these events gather momentum in time and stand witness for not only what has happened but also what can happen again. People have been made captive, executed, thrown into jail, left to rot in shattered buildings while the whole world watches on tv.

Michael Smither CNZM. 20 5 2021 Otama

What we see and what we understand are often at odds. All these paintings in this series are stimulated by real events Michael Smither