Oil spill art makes an impact

 

By Julia Wade

The latest art exhibit to hit Mangawhai has astonished and alerted audiences with its confronting creativity and underlining crucial message. More than 60 locals and visitors attended the official launch of artist Nicola Everett’s confronting exhibit ‘Gold and Oil – The Legacy and Menace of the Niagara’ on February 10.

Viewer’s expressed their surprise and shock of not only learning for the first time about the sinking of the luxury ocean liner but also the current environmental threat from the vast amount of oil still present in the rusting hull.  

A victim of the first WWII maritime act of war in the Pacific, RMS Niagara lies 120 metres below the surface on the seabed just north of the Mokohinau and Hen & Chicken Islands, after colliding with a German mine in June 1940.

The volume of oil held in the decaying tanks is estimated to be three or four times more than the MV Rena spill of 2011, New Zealand's worst maritime environmental disaster.

Included on the guest list was concerned Waitemata and Gulf Ward Councillor Mike Lee (an advocate for government action regarding the oil leakage), Maritime NZ (MNZ) representative Belinda Vernon, Conservation Minister the Honorable Eugenie Sage, Kaipara deputy mayor Peter Wethey, and author Keith Gordon who wrote ‘Deep Water Gold’, a book telling the complete story of the Niagara. Mike Lee says he was impressed although not surprised – given the close location of the wreck to Mangawhai’s shores – at the turnout and the depth of concern from locals regarding the oil threat.

“Nicola’s exhibition is not only a brilliant display of multi-disciplinary art but a political message that has come out of her creative expression, to sound the alarm and send the message: While there is still oil in Niagara, it still poses a threat,” he said to the audience. “’Gold and Oil’ presents the beauty of the natural world she is clearly close to, with the unseen menace that threatens, it leaves no doubt that the artist is driven by a deep sense of looming disaster. This is a woman who has worked very hard to ‘hammer out a warning’ to her community and to the government. Unfortunately the silence from Wellington remains deafening.”

In her speech, Belinda Vernon says the show was a ‘stunning and thought-provoking exhibition’. “Art has a way of communicating… and this exhibit speaks volumes,” she said. “Maritime NZ is having a meeting in ten days time and the Niagara was actually on the agenda but it will be more so now.”

She also said the Crown will be ultimately financially responsible for the costs of investigating and extracting the oil or the cleanup, if the oil suddenly spills from the wreck. Keith Gordon commented that Everett’s artwork accurately portrays the story of the doomed vessel. “The cost to remove the oil does not compare to the cost of an environmental clean-up,” he says.

“Unfortunately it’s actually not a matter of ‘if’ the oil spills but more likely ‘when’.” Everett has written to all MPs and the Maritime NZ Board to ask the government to monitor the wreck more regularly and begin to identify options to safely remove the oil rather than rely on contingency plans as the oil slowly leaks into the environment. “Our priority is saving what we have, not letting it be destroyed,” she says. “However at the moment it is being ignored and we are waiting until a catastrophe happens.”