The Library of Ralph Hotere

Fotos de Cuba. Havana, Cuba: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, Insituto Cubano del Libro, [1975]. SPRH 972.91 FOT

In 1996 businessman and new-right ideologue Alan Gibbs paid for Hotere, and fellow artists Bill Culbert and Russell Moses, to accompany him on a trip to Cuba to witness the failure of ‘communism’. The visit did not have quite the salutary effect that Gibbs was expecting; his companions’ socialist inclinations remained intact. Hotere loved the ambience of Havana and was impressed by their commitment to the arts. The Cuban Revolution is brought to life in Hotere’s collection by this trading card album published in Cuba by the Felices canned fruit company in 1960. He owned two copies of Guevara’s Reminiscences; the first paperback edition published by Monthly Review Press in 1968 (on display) and the first Pelican paperback published in 1969. Fotos de Cuba was published to commemorate the 1st Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba which did not take place until 1975, 16 years after Batista was deposed.

Fotos de Cuba. Havana, Cuba: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, Insituto Cubano del Libro, [1975]. SPRH 972.91 FOT
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Fotos de Cuba. Havana, Cuba: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, Insituto Cubano del Libro, [1975]. SPRH 972.91 FOT

Fotos de Cuba. Havana, Cuba: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, Insituto Cubano del Libro, [1975]. SPRH 972.91 FOT
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Album de la Revolucion Cubana 1952–1959. Havana, Cuba: Revista Cinegrafico, S.A., [c. 1960]. SPHR

Album de la Revolucion Cubana 1952–1959. Havana, Cuba: Revista Cinegrafico, S.A., [c. 1960]. SPHR
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Album de la Revolucion Cubana 1952–1959. Havana, Cuba: Revista Cinegrafico, S.A., [c. 1960]. SPHR

Album de la Revolucion Cubana 1952–1959. Havana, Cuba: Revista Cinegrafico, S.A., [c. 1960]. SPHR
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Postcard. Gert Wiescher, Viva Che. (1968). Paris: Éditions Hazan, 1997. SPHR

Postcard. Gert Wiescher, Viva Che. (1968). Paris: Éditions Hazan, 1997. SPHR
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Che Guevara, Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1968. SPHR 972.9106 GUE

Che Guevara, Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1968. SPHR 972.9106 GUE
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Gil Hanly, Peace is more than the absence of war. Auckland: New Women’s Press, 1986. SPHR 327.172 HAN

Anti-nuclear politics featured in Hotere’s work from the early 1960s with the Polaris series. The USA deployed Polaris missile-armed submarines to a new base in the Holy Loch in Scotland in 1961, the year Hotere and his first wife Bet arrived in the UK. Polaris submarines were placed on the highest alert level during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 when nuclear war became a very real possibility. Hotere revisited the Polaris theme in the 1980s in response to the burgeoning movement against nuclear warship visits in Aotearoa. His Mururoa series protested French nuclear testing in the Pacific. Gil Hanly’s photographs in Peace Is More capture well the energy of the New Zealand peace movement of the time. The book was published by the independent feminist publisher New Women’s Press in Auckland.

Gil Hanly, Peace is more than the absence of war. Auckland: New Women’s Press, 1986. SPHR 327.172 HAN
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H. G. Slingsby, Rape of Vietnam. [Wellington]: Modern Books Press, 1966. SPHR 959.7043 SLI

Harry Slingsby was president of the Wellington Branch of the New Zealand Peace Council, an organisation that grew out of the union-driven campaign against conscription after World War II. Slingsby wrote three books on the war in Vietnam, of which Hotere owned the first, Rape of Vietnam. An inscription in the front reads, ‘Warren. If you already have a copy pass this along. Iain’, indicating it most likely came to Hotere via poet Warren Dibble, who was Robert Burns Fellow at Otago University in 1969, the same year Hotere was the Frances Hodgkins Fellow.

H. G. Slingsby, Rape of Vietnam. [Wellington]: Modern Books Press, 1966. SPHR 959.7043 SLI
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H. G. Slingsby, Rape of Vietnam. [Wellington]: Modern Books Press, 1966. SPHR 959.7043 SLI

H. G. Slingsby, Rape of Vietnam. [Wellington]: Modern Books Press, 1966. SPHR 959.7043 SLI
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