Behave – Yellow
Limited Edition Screenprint, 2011
4 colour screenprint on Artistico Fabriano
Size 760 x 560 mm
Signed. Edition of 180
A deft visual remix of New Zealand pop culture and modernist art iconography, “Behave” is one of the most famous examples to date of Weston Frizzell’s slick “commerce meets street art “ collaborative work. Both logo and the colour-schemes directly reference the iconic Beehive matches brand. creating a visual pun on the name given to New Zealand’s parliament buildings.
The political resonance of the work lies in the reworking of the iconic Beehive matches logo with Gordon Walters influenced Koru bars, re-contextualising the colour-scheme to a distinctly Maori palette and subverting the original logo design and text into a bicultural political imperative, with high-brow modernist art sensibility.
Mutating Beehive into the politically imperative Behave, the text wittily echoes Austin Power’s catch-cry. The choice of stencil font lends the work a military immediacy, and a rural woolshed grittiness that makes more than a passing nod to Hotere’s Aromoana works.