Letters from Ronald's Room
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Ronald Hugh Morrieson, 1922 - 1972, immortalised the town of Hawera. But not in the way they would have chosen to be remembered. In his 'Taranaki Gothic Horror' novels The Scarecrow, Came a Hot Friday,
Predicament and Pallet on the Floor he took a 'worm's eye view' of the place and its people. In 1992, when the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise decided to buy the big old house (built by his grandfather) where he'd been born, lived all his life, and died, folk were eager to let it go. Who wanted to remember 'that old drunk?'  Tim Chadwick, artist and teacher, formed 'the Scarecrow' committee in the hope of preserving the house and collected 60 signatures against the sale. A committee in favour of the sale collected 1300. Just before the house was demolished to make way for the Kentucky Fried, artist Roger Morris invited a group of other artists to spend a few days working in Morrieson's attic bedroom, making artworks to capture something visual before the wreckers came. Click here for that time, in Roger's words. The resulting art was exhibited in a show called "Letters from Ronald's Room".
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Photographer Laurence Aberhart and painters Marianne Muggeridge, Alby Carter and Roger Morris captured Hawera from Morrieson's window
as well as the inside of the room, with a dizzying staircase leading down past fierce wallpaper. Assemblage artist Dale Copeland crawled in the attic and found relics of Morrieson's father's
musical-instrument-repairing and made assemblage artworks titled "Still in the Attic". (There had long been rumours of an illegal still being used there).
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click on any image to see the exhibition
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They were strong-feeling days, capturing what we could of a fine writer's world before Hawera happily covered his traces with a clean modernity that they found more comfortable. The original "Letters from Ronald's Room" exhibition was offered to the Govett Brewster Gallery, but rejected. Roger still has the rejection letter from director Robert Leonard, battered from being crumpled and thrown against a wall but then smoothed out and kept as another example of colourful locals being kept out of sight, whether writers or artists. So we showed the artworks in 'Gallery 79' - the office foyer of supportive architect Clive Cullen. Now (2008) a new artist-in-residence at the Govett Brewster gallery is running a one-day festival to celebrate Ronald Hugh Morrieson's life and work. Called "Came a Hot Sundae" it will involve readings, a walking tour, an awards ceremony for the short-story writing competition, trips to the attic-in-the-field, a dress-up competition, a tower-building project .... just about everything except visual art. Same old, same old. So we do it ourselves. Here, again, is the exhibition "Letters from Ronald's Room". |
on Ronald Hugh Morrieson www.pukeariki.com/en/stories/arts/morrieson.htm