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Revisiting the White Hart Hotel
Terry Urbahn returns to his hometown of New Plymouth and to the legendary and dilapidated White Hart Hotel in his installation, The Sacred Hart, featuring at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery from 8 December to 2 March.
Its glory days now long gone, the last accessible part of the White Hart Hotel is the Public Bar, a drinking den that was added in 1970. This venue attracted a diverse crowd, cultivating raucous revelry, a wild music scene and an unruly reputation.
Urbahn's video installation, produced with the support of a $20,000 grant from the Screen Innovation Production Fund, reunites a handful of White Hart protagonists for one night of remembrance and celebration. It pans a laden table, tracing characters and plots as the guests revisit old lives, rituals, memories and what a community stood for.
A partnership between Creative New Zealand and the New Zealand Film Commission, the Screen Innovation Production Fund offers grants to emerging and experienced moving-image makers for innovative, experimental and non-commercial moving-image productions.
Once a White Hart regular, Urbahn wanted to capture the recent history of the place before the Public Bar and its committed patrons move on. Their collective interpretations of life in the bar not only capture local stories but also reflect how socialising has changed in recent times.
Urbahn's work is not a conventional documentary and by piecing together fragments of conversation and sound, he intends his installation to mimic the experience of being in the bar, a guest at the table.
Govett-Brewster Director Rhana Devenport says Urbahn's long-term project reflects the iconic status that the White Hart has in the New Plymouth community.
"The White Hart has a unique place in the personal histories of generations of people in New Plymouth," she says. "This sophisticated and complex work shows the rich interplay of the many colourful, sometimes notorious, characters and events that played a part in an alternative, suppressed history of the city."
Terry Urbahn exhibits throughout the country and internationally in both solo and group exhibitions. His artwork is held in many private and public collections, including the Govett-Brewster, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Christchurch Art Gallery and the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.
The Sacred Hart is accompanied by a programme of free public events, including talks by the artist and Robert Leonard, Director of the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane. There is also a rare behind-the-scenes tour of the White Hart Hotel offered by one of Urbahn's video protagonists, Brian Wafer of IMA Hit Records.