Ralph Hotere, Red on Black Born in Northland in 1931. Studied art at Auckland and Dunedin Teachers' Training Colleges. Worked in Northland as a school art specialist for nine years. Awarded an Association of N.Z. Art Societies' Fellowship in 1961, taking him to England and Europe; 1965 to resume his post as an Arts and Crafts Advisor to the Education Department. 1969 Won also the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship at Otago University. Much of Hotere's later work has been predominantly black, using other colour only for the thin cruciforms included in many of them. You can get very deep with the black be the wasteland of humanity He says "(This) may be called an object of visual contemplation ... I have provided the spectator with a starting point ... It is the spectator who provokes the change and the meaning in (this work) ".