Miscellany: B-2 bomber as art

The sinister beauty of the B-2 dominated the news this week reminding me of a stunning piece of art by New Zealand sculptor Brett Graham, who took the arrow-like aircraft and turned it into an artwork

The B-2 bomber — the B-2 Spirit by Northrop — is an undoubted aviation and military achievement, and its use this week to drop laser-guided deep penetration bombs into Iranian nuclear sites has dominated the news with dark fascination.

Immersing myself in the excitable saturation coverage of the bat-like stealth aircraft and its mission from Missouri to Iran and back, reminded me of an artwork I first encountered in Paris and recognised as rooted in Māori imagery. (As the child of a wartime bomber pilot and a lifelong aviation buff, I find the B-2 compelling.)

Foreshore Defender by Brett Graham — Copyright recognised and link to Te Papa collection

‘Foreshore Defender’ is a 2008 cast iron sculpture by New Zealand artist Brett Graham (Ngāti Koroki Kahukura, Tainui - for overseas readers, that illustrates his Māori genealogy or whakapapa.) The work is a representation of the B-2 bomber in all its sinister beauty. It is unmistakably a B-2 flying wing (one day all aircraft may look like it), but rendered with ornate Māori carving in a rusted brown finish.

The object of the artwork for Brett was to make a statement about what was then a threat, later carried out, to restrict Māori indigenous rights to the foreshore and seabed of New Zealand/Aotearoa. Several of his significant pieces of the time involved sculptures and pictures of modern military hardware with added Māori references.

Another, later and wooden, version of Brett Graham’s Foreshore Defender which he shared with me from his site

I am not skilled enough to explain what Brett was trying to convey but it involves how we see modern state-created weaponry and tactics of stealth and destruction in relation to what we label as terror or the tactics of indigenous non-state groups.

Auckland Art Gallery puts it this way in a description of a print version of Brett’s depiction of the B-2 turned into a Māori weapon of war: ‘In the prints, the artist lays bare his plans for ‘weapons of mass destruction’. His blueprints for terror appropriate settler weaponry – stealth bombers and the Davy Crockett Missile, the world’s smallest nuclear warhead. Their infusion with Māori, Pacific, and Middle Eastern patterns plays on the ‘othering’ of peoples as terrorists.’ It goes on as such things do. Brett has done later work on the B-2 in wood and starkly black and grey.

I was stunned by the sculpture of the B-2 and still have a postcard version. The original is in the Te Papa national New Zealand museum. I found the juxtaposition of the inherent arrow-like dreadful beauty of the B-2 and Māori fine carving fascinating.

The real B-2 from below - Creative Commons Copyright Onetwo1 at English Wikipedia

I only realised Brett Graham had sculpted one of my favourite pieces of New Zealand art when I interviewed him last year for a story for The Listener magazine about one of his more recent works — also reinterpreting a weapon of war — a replica of the turret of a naval ship used in the New Zealand land wars. His work, and in that case the actual pair of turrets, highlight the ambiguity of historical objects, weaponry, and how we interpret the stories and history associated with them.

Brett’s work is shown and in most cases described on his website. He also posts to Instagram and features much of his more recent work on similar themes of reinterpreting military objects in the light of Māori history and culture.