Gordon Crook: Banners and Wall Hangings

Gordon Crook was a British textile artist who came to live in Wellington in 1972, aged 51. Through contacts at the Dowse Art Museum and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Crook was commissioned by the architect Miles Warren to make banners for the New Zealand Chancery in Washington D.C. (1979–80), followed by banners and wall hangings for the Michael Fowler Centre in Wellington (1981–83). Crook’s work was suigeneric, idiosyncratic in its imagery and development, a world feeding on itself. Outside any national or current artworld style, Crook extended and enriched New Zealand’s public visual art scene.[i] [i] See my three articles on the work of Gordon Crook: “Gordon Crook: tapestries,” Tuhinga 31 (2020): 70–90; “Gordon Crook: The Pastel Triptychs,” Tuhinga 32 (2021): 120–34; and “Gordon Crook and the Wolf-Man,” Tuhinga 33 (2022): 1–29.