Shane Cotton Works 1998

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SHANE COTTONA publication produced to coincide withthe exhibition following the artist's tenure as1998 Frances Hodgkins Fellow at theUniversity of Otago, Dunedin.Edited by linda Tyler.Published by the Hocken LibraryUrtiversi ty of OtagoPOBox 56DunedinNew Zealandwith publication funding assistance fromCreative New Zealand Toi Aotearoa.NUiven.ZThe Frances Hodgkins Fellowship is supported byThe Community Trust of Otago

THE COMMUNITY TRUSTOFOTAGO

ISBN: 0-902041-72-X 1998 The authors and the Hocken Library.All rights reserved. No part of his publicationmay be reproduced stored in a retrieval system ortransmitted in any form or by other meanselectrortic, mechartical, photocopying, recording,without permission in writing from the publisher.infringers of copyright render themselvesliable to prosecution.Published on the occasion of he exhibitionShane Cotton at the Hocken libraryUrtiversityof Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand,3 March-4 April1999.

Shane Cotton's Fellowship was funded byCreativeNew Zealand and the Frances HodgkinsFellowship Trust at the University ofOtago.Jnlversiry ot Auckland library

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IN 19 6 2, the legal firm of Brasch,Thompson and Miller approachedthe University of Otago on behalf ofan anonymous group of ndividualsfrom the artistic and business com munity of Dunedin. Their proposalwas to establish an annual fellowshipfor an artist to work full-

foreseeable future . This collectionis founded on work gifted by formerfellows and it will grow yearlywith a further gift from each fellow.The collection remains owned bythe University where it will be basedwith the intention that it be toured

time for a year in a studioon campus. The purposeof the fellowship was toaid and encourage the artistin their work, to associatethem with the life of theUniversity, and to foster aninterest in the arts within

Foreword and that individual piecescontinue to be madeavailable for exhibition.The FrancesHodgkinsFellowship atthe Universityof Otago

The original purposeof providing artists withtime, space and thefreedom to develop hasremained central to thefellowship; and my corre

the University and the community.Emphasis was on giving the emerg ing artist an opportunity to developtheir work. The original funddonated .by this group was some1600 pounds sterling.

Investments were successful andthe first Frances Hodgkins Fellowship was awarded to MichaelIllingworth in 1966. Despite financial difficulties, particularly overthe past decade, the University,the wider community and severalagencies and trusts have continuedto support the original vision sothat a fellow has been appointedevery year.

A notable example of suchsupport is Creative New Zealand'sgenerous sponsorship of the 1998fellowship as well as its supportfor Shane Cotton as a leadingcontemporary Maori artist.

More recently, the generosity ofthe Community Trust of Otago indonating $300,000 to the fellowship fund in recognition of theUniversity's establishment of thenew Frances Hodgkins FellowshipCollection has provided financialsecurity for the fellowship for the

spondence and contact with fellowshas confirmed the wond erful successof the journey begun in 1962. Theheartfelt warmth expressed by former fellows for the contributionof the fellowship to their personalvisions and careers confirms therealisation that so much good comesfrom the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship. This good can be written about,talked about, and above all it can beseen the work produced by thesetalented artists . As we look back, thecontribution to forging the directionof contemporary art in New Zealandand to achieving international recognition is a legacy to celebrate.

The success of Shane Cotton'syear has epitomised both what thefellow and the fellowship stand for.He has used the time and resourcesto study, reflect and think deeplyabout his work, its directions andmeanings. Moreover, the emergentvisions and themes shown by hispresent body of work may be seen asan integral link between the pastand the future. In short, he has carried on the Frances Hodgkins Fellowtradition and like all fellows hasadded a special impact.

Professor es Williams is Dean ofthe Department of Physical Education at theUniversity of Otago and has been Convenerof the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship SelectionCommittee since 1991.

WHEN Shane Cotton was interviewed on Concert FM's Arts Weekprogramme, The rise and rise ofyoung Maori artists, the youngguns broadcast on 30 September1995, two Pakeha were sufficientlyriled by his responses to fire off

envy Cotton's relatively early rec ognition. Yet from the time thetwenty -one year old enrolled inthe University of Canterbury Schoolof Fine Arts in 19 8 5, he seemedmarked for success. A brilliantstudent in painting and drawing,

Cotton was one of a groupetters of indignation tothe Listener. Both pouredscorn on Cotton's guardedattempts to define himselfas an artist in terms of his

ai tetiaho hwh tu

of students taught by theEnglish painter RiduanTomkins who have goneon to achieve prominencenationally and internationally. His art schoolMaori identity, and questioned its relevance to the

business of making art.To flog the racist card,

i rungaA star shinesabove

the painter Alan Pearson thundered,smacks of elitism and a desire for

protection from insecurity. T. P.Garrity likened Cotton and his colleagues to the type of baselesslyopinionated bureaucrats of postmodern life portrayed in]. R. Saul'sVoltaire s Bastards: All the signs arethere: the arrogance, the absence ofany values or ethos to speak of,the empty, pretentious rhetoric andthe flat, passionless contradict-me if- you dare tone of the fledglingacademic. This spiteful outburst isalmost impossible to reconcile eitherwith the writer- the distinguishedCurator of Pictures at the HockenLibrary at the t ime-or with therather diffident, thoughtful andmild-mannered subject of the radiointerview, not to mention the hauntingly poetic work for which hehad already become well known.Cotton was to receive the accoladeof the University of Otago's FrancesHodgkins Fellowship just over twoyears later.

Generally speaking, it is understandable if artists whose reputations are hard won, and deserved,over a long struggle begrudge or

contemporaries includeSeraphine Pick (his sue -

cessor in 19 9 9 as Frances HodgkinsFellow) and Peter Robinson (whosephenomenal career runs in tandemwith Cotton's.) He carried off themajor university prizes and scholarships in Fine Arts, and in the year ofhis gradua tion, 19 8 9, he landed theWilkins and Davies Young Artistofthe Year award.

In September 1992, Cotton wasappointed to a lectureship in MaoriVisual Arts at Massey University. AtMassey, new and largely unanticipated directions began to open up inCotton's work. In Palmerston North,the visceral, biological, specimenaspect of his Christchurch paintingsgave way to interrogations of NewZealand's political and cultural histories expressed through the kind ofpictorial imagery reproduced in, forexample, Alan Taylor's Maori Folk Artpublished in 1988. He quoted andadapted, respectfully, from the naiveand naturalistic imagery painted inthe late nineteenth-century whareof Aotearoa's colonised indigenouspeople, juxtaposing, recontextualising and reframing his sources inwhat might be termed post-colonial discourse. To these pictorial


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Heke I, 1998 .

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RE E l lR[Of llnli HOME EID a. a. aO TRIRPIRI n c nTRIRI TRlRI lRI Taiamai is the ancient nameof the central Taitokerau(Northland) region that is

Sl lane Cotton s tur angawaewae (ancestralhome) . It was named after a large whitebird, whose connection to the area isremembered in Ngapuhi ancestral korero(narratives) and many of Cotton s morerecent works. An understanding of theTaiamai legend not only unlocks some ofthe meanings of Cotton s paintings, but canalso be used to appreciate his work as awhole, as a journey of discovery from a distant place to an ancestral home, symbolisedby the decorated Maori meeting house.Theworks are not only postcards of significantplaces reached along the way, but alsorepresentations of Cotton s own changingworld view.

One story about Taiamai recounts howthe bird suddenly arrived in the area, andbegan to drink from a water-filled hollowin a rock, near the modern-day town ofOhaeawai. Kaitara, who was the local rangatira (chief), told his people that the birdhad come from Hawaiki, their ancestralhomeland. He said that the bird had beendelivered to them by the w inds ofTangaroa

(god of the sea),should be knowntowards us from th

ing to Kaitara, ththe tribe, it was alited) and shouldcontinued reappearock, in the domathe mana (prestige,by extension, its pa jealous rangatirattempted to captubird escaped by mmai never reappeaof the guilt strickjoined the bird, in

Kaitara namedmai , which was phrase Ko te tinaor this stone is theIn time, the namethe region around tmentioned in thewhakatauki (provenga puriri o Taiamof Taiamai are lauprobably describesing trees that wer


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they forced the former occupiers off theland that became known as Taiamai. In thecontext of this saying, Taiamai is both avictorious Ngapuhi statement and a lament,uttered by the evicted, who are named asthe Ngati Pou tribe in some narratives, andNgati Miru in others. The whakatauki: isrecalled through the text used in many ofCotton s paintings, including Kenehi(1998) and Lying in the Black Land (1998) .

TE HREAEnliRJDUAnEY [1 1 10 - 11]It could be argued that,over time, Cotton s workhas shown a progression

from the amorphous to the specific. Thisprogression is like a journey, from a distantlocation to Taiamai. The initial pictorialindistinctness indicates an awareness, butnot a clear view, of the final destination.As the journey progresses, and we movetowards the most recent 1998 works, thegoal becomes increasingly apparent.

The segmented biological shapes ofCotton s 1990 New Works offered thepotential of something about to assume acomplete form . Cellular, skeletal buildingstructures were painted evenly around thecanvases as representations of the body andshelter. According to Cotton, Each workdepicts numerous forms and objects thathave been assembled and dismantled, muti-lated, disfigured, p r t l l andpartially hidden . The canvases looked likediagrams, but they could also have beeninterrr eted as Petri dishes, using artificialmeans to control natural elements.

By categorising natural images, Cottonwas also raising the issue of biologicalclassification as a way of controlling people,

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especially indigenous peoples. Some forms,like those in Shields ( 19 9 0) were made toappear more prominent, so that they dominated other washed-out forms in a colonialgame of survival of the fittest . The biomorphic images were painted on a mistybackground, which Cotton cleared, in hislater canvases, to reveal his new outlooks.

By 1995, Cotton was using a vocabularyf ~ P a k e h a landscapeimages, Hongi Hika s writing practice,hakari feasting stages, popular culture, andRingatu figurative painting. Compared tothe earlier biomorphic works, these paintings raised specific political issues, suchas the loss of power and division of resources suffered by many Maori since themid -nineteenth century. Counter-colonia lMaori responses to these challenges wereillustrated through Cotton s employmentof Maori figurative painting techniques, - \Q__s c>l\ -originally developed by the founder ofthe Ringatu Church, Te Kooti ArikirangiTeTuruki.

Maori figurative painting offers aninsight into the Maori world which doesnot necessarily require an understanding oftribal abstract art conventions. Its accessibility further clarified the journey onwhich Cotton was embarking. Figurativepaintings were first used in place of customary cap ings and abstract k o w h i w h (scrp lD Pai ntings on tlle structural framework of Ringatu churches and meetinghouses. These older arts were time consuming in their production and could only beunderstood by viewers who were familiarwith tribal artistic conventions and korero.Figurative painting, which was comparatively

easy to produce, transcended tribal boundaries and contained easily recognisablenaturalistic content that better . suitedthe needs of the multi-tribal followers ofthe Ringatu Church. The polychromatic

aintings depicted the relfgiO-jJoliticaliconography of the Church, includingplants and celestial symbols, as well as animals, portraits, and scenes from daily life.

Over the past six years, Cotton has beenparticularly interested in re-interpreting theRingatu figurative plant paintings of theRongopai meeting house, built at Waituhi,near Gisborne, in 1886. Native and introduced flowers and trees appeared in theirnatural state or in pots along Rongopai sside walls. While the plants themselves arethought to repre sent the mana and bountyof Maori land, their containment in potssymbolises the division and control of theland through legislation and surveying. TheRingatu-derived potted plant has made anappearance in a number of Cotton s paintings, such as Whakapiri atu te Whenua (1993),Tekau mii ono (1994), Diamond Line (1995),Viewed (1997), and Ko te Rakau a Taiiimai( 19 9 7) . These works draw on the koreroassociated with the Rongopai plant paintings, particularly that which talks about theconfiscation, division, and containment of

aori land by the government . Cotton hasadded more specific meanings to_his pottedplant paintings by stating that they also~ s e n t the. individualisation of Maoriland title under the 18 6 5 Native Lands Actwhich attempted to destroy the communalbasis of Maori life.

It is tempting to read the layered andcompartmentalised areas of some n s

earlier paintings as~ n s and sectionnot alwa s intendein this way. In pa(1997), layers werthe repeating horizgrowing from theHowever, only theworks, like Middleplant stem was imvertical line, throcanvas. On occasiorepresented by roletters, which form

o m p o s e d by CottoCotton s destinatioor more specificallywharenui (meetinNgawha, in the Taipretation of .the horeligions, and perits tribal significancin his 1998 paintina legacy of tribal,and symbols whicand reconstitutedrelevant to his cont

For instance, ththe Taiamai people,in Taitokerau, lostCotton is one of mtions to the regionof symbols. His Nlike most other wdoes not feature thpaintings, or tukutwhich are a combuildings in other p


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These arts were abandoned by early nineteenth century Taitokerau artists for atleast two reasons. Firstly, local missionariesdiscouraged their congregations from producing art which de12icted ancestral or~aori spiritual themes. The missionarieshad wrongly assumed that Maori were worshipping these images in a way that wouldinterfere with their ability to accept Christianity. Secondly. many Maori artists from

-Taitokerau were killed while taking part inthe Musket Wars between 1818 and 1824.

There have been many attempts to reviveTaitokerau s artistic heritage, culminating inthe current resurgence ofinterest, in which Cottonis a participant . Pilot projects, undertaken by theSchool of Maori Arts andCrafts in the 193Os and bythe Ratana Church in the1940s, largely failed tocreate a sustainable inter-est in customary Maori

moved towards the integration of localMaori forms with Western-inspired artisticconcepts . His art is part of Taitokerau scultural renaissance.

Cotton s 1998 works are another contribution to Taitokerau s tribal artistic traditions, since they provide a new lexicon ofsymbols which are used to recreate hiswharenui outside ofTaiamai.The paintingsare his response to the undecorated house.He has developed new symbols from olderMaori kowhaiwhai and carving motifs .Biblical and Christian references are sometimes used in conjunction with these

older symbols 0 clarifytheir purpose a s ~colonial sigp.s. The text~ s which Cotton used in his earlierworks, are still present,but the b r ~ c h e d plantimagery that was alsoseen in previous canvaseshas been replaced by

arts . However, initiativeswhich emerged during Te Manu o t Rangi 998 another form of t a c k ~ n g Oj-ke-\


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( n .ory illd enligh,ening function.Cotton was attracted to the pitau-a-man

aia pattern s Christian Maori origins, whichparallels his own family history. This patternwas invented by the Rongowhakaata tribalcraftsmen who worked on the ManutukeAnglican church project, near Gisborne,between 1849 and the early 1860s. Theirlocal missionary, the Archdeacon WilliamWilliams had banned the carvers fromusing the frontal humanoid tiki figurein the church's carved and painted decorations because he thought that the} werefa1s dols. In order t nclude illustrations

f their ancestors in thechurch, without incitingthe anger of Williams,the craftsmen paintedthe limbs and bodiesof manaia , which wereprofile tiki, in complexkowhaiwhai patternedconfigurations on someof the wooden detailing.

1998 work. Text has been present in Maoribuilding decoration since the early 1840s,when the Rongowhakaata carvers labelledall their ancestors in theTe Hau-ki-Turangameeting house. This tradition is continuedin Cotton s paintings. Text is presented inconjunction with God and the Devil, in theform of horned and pore (dehorned) tikiheads, and Taiamai the bird, sometimesrepresented by a sinuously-bodied characterwhich has manaia and tiki heads at eachof its ends. By depicting Taiamai in thisway, Cotton could be suggesting that thebird is a divine figure in the Christian and

Maori worlds.Te Manu te Rangi and

Heke I show God as a disembodied tiki floatingabove the landscape witha phrase that could betranslated as either thechief is shining downfrom the sky or 'the Lordis shining down fromthe heavens . Cotton, inThe complexity of the., He mahinga hou, 1998, patterns effectively dis- this instance, has recast

the tiki as a divine being, with both\\?t that Williams1 ' J l ~ thought that only no n-figurative formsj'.X were being displayed. The Taiamai region

If\>;\ similarly attracted Church of England mis-()\.1' ' (\/\, 0 r 9~

~ \ . \ ~ / \ isionaries, and there are Anglican ministersin Cotton s whanau (extended family) .

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Pitau-a-manaia, and the korero associatedwith its origins, appeals to Cotton, who has ,used the pattern to illustrate the influence of 1IChristianity on his whanau and Maori art .

, Indeed, biblical passages and Christian-fAV rJoJ ( _inspired sayings, all written in the Maori

, /o... f\. \ language, are recurring themes in Cotton su -

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Christian and Maori characteristics. This is asubtle shift from the use of tiki figures, inMaori carving and painting, to depict ances-tors, and a necessary development awayfrom the secularisation of tiki by the touristmarket, as parodied in Dick Frizzell s 1992Tiki series. However, in Te Manu te Rangi

and Heke II, Cotton has created a new versionof the tiki, shown as a horned and red figurerespectively, to represent the Devil. Puregood and evil, in the Christian sense, wereunknown concepts in pre-Christian Maori

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spirituality and, as a consequence, Maoriart. Therefore, Cotton s portrayal of God andthe Devil as tiki figures provides a customary motif with an important new role.

Hopa Lying in the Black Land Kenehi III andHeke I all make reference to a passage fromHopa (Job) 29:18 which reads, I shall diein my nest, and I shall multiply my days asthe sand . Hopa, like Taiamai, had found asafe place to 'nest', from which only deathcould remove him. In a desire to achieveimmortality both characters longed for asmany days as there were grains of sand ona beach. In Hopa this craving for longevityis shown by a landscape,which is a beachscape,and the figure ofTaiamaias the nesting bird.

mahinga hou which iscanvas, is a referenceKoriniti (Corinthiansreads, Therefore ifhe is a new creaturebehold all things armahinga hou as wellHeke II Taiamai hasmade up of old formthe region being spirAnother biblical coappropriated intoography, and has bCotton, is the them

Cotton uses Taiamai,as a beaked head, adouble-headed figure,and as a word in text, toexpress group authority.This meaning not onlyoriginates from Maoriinterpretations of the Koroniti IV, 1998

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korero and whakatauki which repeat Taiamai s name. In He mahinga hou Te Manu teRangi and Kenehi III, the figure ofTaiamai hasbeen depicted to resemble other culturallypowerful concepts . such as the phoenixrising, patriotic avian symbolism, and theiconography of gangpatches.

Cotton s portrayal ofTaiamai as a com posite creature, made from a sinuous'North-western regional style body, with asquare Central and Eastern regional styletiki head at one end, and a manaia head atthe other, has a biblical basis. The title of He

ling their buildingsemphasise the concidea one step furthe0 , Q , X , to r e p

end in many of hisome instances a oopainted in conjunctand symbols, suggemortal lives are wh

t o universal time.In keeping withMaori oratory, Cokupu whakari (Mao

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words), in combination with text, to drawattention to contemporary situations. Thekupu whakari which translates as whowill right the upturned waka (Maori warcanoe) was often quoted by late nineteenthand early twentieth century Maori pondering on who would reverse their decliningocial fortunes . In Heke I, Heke II, and Lying~ u p r i h t and upturned waka

recall this kupu whakari, and text sometimes offers reasons for, and solutions to,the problem. The body of an invertedwaka in Heke I is emblazoned with a quote

Following meeting house precedent, atleast one illustrious local ancestor is presentin the house that Cotton is decorating.Papahurihia, as the text on the paintingindicates, was he rangatira nui ( a greatleader ) in Taitokerau during the 18 3OsThe disembodied tiki at the top of thepainting indicates his chiefly status.Papahurihia combined missionary teachingwith earlier Maori spiritual beliefs in anattempt to explain how Maori could surviveand progress in the colonial world thatwas being thrust upon them. A landscape

from Hoani (John)6:19 which, in theBible, reads, they seeJesus walking on thesea and drawing nighunto the ship: andthey were afraid . Thepainting is purposefully ambiguous in itsintent. Is Christianityto blame for the overturning of the waka? Papahurihi a, 19 9 8

view at the bottom ofthe painting, which isjuxtaposed to script,illustrates how Pakehaknowledge could complement Maori concepts.Papahurihia s doctrinewas religio-political,since spiritual andsecular matters were,and still are, inseparable in the Maori worldview He was ther, is Jesus the saviour

who l l upright the craft and rescue itsoccupants, nga iwi Maori?

For his new catalogue of symbols,Cotton has revived some old Taitokeraudecorative styles. As mentioned earlier,the sinuous bodies of his Taiamai figuresare executed in the North-western styleof the region. Similarly, the origin of thepuhoro pattern, seen in Heke I, has beenattributed to t he Taitokerau region, whereit was being used as a facial moko (Maoritattoo) pattern at the time of Captain JamesCook s 17 69 visit.

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Northland equivalent ofTaranaki s Te Whitio-Rongomai, and Maungapohatu s RuaKenana, which opens the possibility ofMcCahonesque readings of Cotton s work.But above this level of meaning, thepainting is primarily a homage to one ofTaitokerau s formative historic leaders,whose life undoubtedly had an impact onthe outlook of the artist s whanau.

Compared to earlier layered works, amore certain architectural quality is apparent in Heke I and Heke II. Heke is the Maoriword for house rafters , and Cotton has \

arranged these decorated members oneither side of a tahuhu (ridgepole) whichdivides each canvas in half Heke I andHeke II each show twelve pairs of stackedimages, with figures and text relating toGod assuming the highest position. Thenumber of stacked pairs is significant,since the Maori cosmos, according to somenarrators, is divided into twelve parts,and also because twelve is an importantnumber in biblical numerology. Of thetwo paintings, Heke I makes the most explicit references to Cotton s tiirangawaewae.The whakapapa phraseKo Maungatiiroto teMaunga ( Maungatiirotois the mountain ) firmlylocates the work inCotton s own familygenealogy, as do Maorilanguage references tohis subtribe, NgatiRangi, their marae, andthe places and landscape of the Taiamairegion. The influence of

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rthe Anglican Church on the artist s familyand region are also scripturally and symbolically represen ted in the two Heke paintings.In .addition to using biblical phrases andbeginning and end imagery, Cotton em

ploys forms which resemble crucifixes,altar candlesticks, and communion chalices.The religious objects, landscapes, manawa,korero, and heke, which organise the horizontal and vertical elements of these works,refer to the Maori world view, in whichspirituality, land, resources, talk, and buildings,are dominating influences in human life.

Koroniti 1998

This attempt, in Cto decorate a buildinnot imply that thealienated from his tshould the works bto fill an empty hoan expression of thwhich, Cotton beliestructure.The paintinside of a house. Theythe world, yet are athe relate to one l operspective, Cotton

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Like Taiamai the birding of a local placNgapuhi, Ngati RanDr Deidre Brown is a ectuat the University ofCanteMorehu Architecture: a

UniversityofAuckland,


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Rangiheketini 1998oil on canvas collection of t e artist Palmerston North

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Lying n the Black Land, 1998oil on canvas, collectionof Brian Sweeney Jane Vesty, Wellington

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Kowhetewhete 998oil on canvas private collection Sydney

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Kenehi III 1998o l on canvas private collection Auckland

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Whakakitenga i te Kenehi 1 8oil o canvas Gow Family collection Auckland


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Celestial Nets, 1991

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Making History:The paintings of Shane Cotton

IWilliamMcAloon

In 1993 Shane Cotton's paintings seemed to undergoan abrupt change. Since leaving art school inChristchurch in 1988, he had worked more or lessconsistently with imagery that drew on microscopicbotanical and biological forms in a r n ~nfluenced by the American painter Terry Winters.

Cotton's paintings, with their graceful flourishes andmuddied ground s took stories of creation down tocellular level. Describing Cotton's dual heritage, theseworks seemed to link easily with both western scientific description and Maori cosmology. Scenes ofprocreation and division, whether that of Rangi andPapa or a minute organism, were played out acrosstheir surfaces.

At the same time, Cotton was also making ricketywooden constructions, painted in encaustic, to han gor lean against the wall. These works, such as Rib( 19 92) and Lineage ( 1 992) continued to make reference to microscopic worlds, but in their forms they~ u l a t e d the post ~ ~h r n u i Maori images had in turn found their wayinto Cotton's canvases, in works such as CelestialNets 1991) which featured sinewy abstractions ofhinaki or eel traps.

Coinciding with a rapid expansion of interest incontemporary Maori art and debates surroundin g itsdefinition, Cotton's works were readily interpreted as~mages of biculturalism. What was seen as tlie1r ybrid

ature, a grafting of Pakeha sc ience and Maori myth,was taken up by writers and curators, and Cotton'sworks were included in a number of significant exhibitions, such as Recognitions at the McDougall ArtAnnex in Christchurch and Shadow of Style at CityGallery, Wellington. Cotton's works joined those of

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\ . brimmed with content, and their subjects were

~ determinedly Maori.\2 Drawing on a vocabulary of mages from late nine-; .\ teenth centur_L Maori art, such as the paintings at thevcY famed Rongopai meeting house near Gisborne, the

'-) new works featured a parade. of pots, plants, flags

land stars alongside s m a l l l a n d s c a ~palisades and scaffolds.The works were figurative, butin no way were they naturalistic, as strange shifts.. ..._....

c a see mountain c o ~ n e d within aflagstaff diminishing meekly against a giant plant.They had a patina of age about them, or a sense of timepassed, suggested by Cotton's palette of @_Uted i a sand ochres. In representing the past to the present,

Cottoo's ile'w works showed that, although markedby age and unfamiliarity, history was certainly not

~ . . \ 2 :CJ.mething finished.These were ~ ? i n t i n g s and'0 Cotton was presented wit h the mantle of modern-day_;jf history painter.It is those paintings that Cotton has built on over

the past six years-both in his reputation and hispractice-to become a major figure in contemporaryNew Zealand art. What seemed an abrupt change in1993 has been sustained and elaborated upon in asuccession of works that have built into an impressiveoeuvre. As this exhibition shows, that oeuvre is farfrom complete, and, more significantly, the historythat Cotton describes in his work, is far from over.

Like history; Cotton's paintings are rich and multilayered. His works are complex lattices of mages andmeanin s, both compositionally an conceptually.

\ ~ g ~ J>latform f r o ~ ~,, \) past, but rather, present a multitude of vantage ~ t s~ ::f rom wh1c 1t m1ght be mterpretedallc understo_oa:\cl cotton's paintings ;r-;- the,:p:r:o.ffilc.tL of a person-;J

, ourney, an inquiry into the events of New Z e a l ~ scolonial history and the shaping effect these-have had~ ~

_ o n _ _ o _ r c . o n t e m ~ b t t u l t m n d e n t i t y . In under-taking this inquiry, Cotton1ian ratd- tlre 'rli:ings thatI am learning, that I find compelling, are also thosethat I want to share with others. The only way to move

forward is to come to terms withwhat has happened in the past -revisiting can bring clarity to ourown existence in the present . Thisis the value of Cotton's work: hisdesire to take his audience withhim, to engage them in a conversa- instead of subjecting them toa lecture.

That conversation has produceda number of common threads inCotton's paintings, what might becalled ~ ~ w r i n Various themes and devices, motifs and images have runthrough Cotton's works over thelast six years, repeated where necessary, adapted and modified asfitting, or sim ply set aside whenothers have better served his ends.The development of his paintingshas seen an increasing fluency onCotton's part, not just with tikangaMaori or te reo Maori, or Cotton'sown whakapapa, but ' with theimages and ideas of history itself.The history of Cotton's worksunfolds like that history: partially,iiitermittently and from differingperspectives. It is in just such away that we can consider thethemes and images of ShaneCotton's works.

.The J:Jaori figurative paintingt ~ a first inspired Cotton flourished in : he decades around theturn of the century, particularlyon New Zealand's East Coast. Aresponse to European colonisation,the imagery of houses such as-w a diverse range

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Whakapiri atu te whenua, 1993

of sources. Some were from customary Maori art,some from the emerging Maori interpretations ofChristianity such as the Ringatu movement led byTeKooti Arikirangi Te Turuki, while others still were fromthe forms and techniques of Pakeha art. The imagesthat resulted are as symbolically rich as they are visually vibrant. Designed to communicate across tribalboundaries, they represented a ;pecific response to thecurrent political situation faced by Maori, as their customary rights to laruland r a d i t ~ a l social structure\

eroded by European colonisation.For Cotton, the appeal of those images lay as much

in their aesthetic-in their strange, h;} br i< _E-ature-asin their content. 'I wanted to bring more prominenceto that work, to comment on it and point out thatthe paintings weren't simply na.lve depictions, thatthey had a strong conceptual basis tied intimately toidentity', Cotton has said. The images deal with varfous aspects of acculturation, app::92riation, i_dentit}'.and history, ?n'tertwined with narrative and myth.

35

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contain a small landscape, perhaps a remnant of thepast, or a seed of the future .These works represent akind of hybrid whakapapa, one which draws togethera multitude of mages from Maori and Pakeha historyto describe a bicultural resent.

Other pots hold still further images, derived frommore recent, Western art sources. Picture painting (1994)is interesting in this respect. In the work Cottontransplants Chrysanthemum a r l y G o r d painting into the Rongopai pot. Walters' famed korupaintings have been the subject of much debate inrecent years, with the propriety of his appropriationsof Maori motifs being attacked and defended by bothMaori and Pakeha. Appropriating the appropriator,Cotton shows that t l l e p r t -action are complex, and the images they produceare equally so. In Picture Painting (1994) appropriationis certainly not the black and white moral issue ithas been painted elsewhere.

Faith another work from 1994, is a further te.stament to the complexities of appropriation . In thispainting, Cotton draws on a work of the same titleby the Australian artist Im ants Tillers. Since the early1980s, Tillers' paintings have revolved around notionsof originality. Borrowing images from a diverse rangeof artists-from Giorgio de Chirico to Colin McCahon-Tillers ' works speak of antipodean distance anddislocation from the art world's centres. Cotton'suse of Tillers' Faith which itself draws on a workby American artist Ed Ruscha, once again shows thebackward and forwards momentum of translationand appropriation.

Tillers' work, Cotton has said, 'contained a numberof fortuitous elements : the word faith and the plantform with its diamond shapes. The word faith relatesdirectly to the millennium movements Te Kooti.andTe Whiti led. Rua Kenana used the diamond fOI;m tow mbolise land . I integrated these elements withinthe symbolic ontext of the pot plant. My work Faithappropriates a "foreign" image, reaffirming it andrepositioning it within the New Zealand context. At \} .

Tekau rna one, 1994another remove, it also commentson that process. Faith is a bridgebetween so-called naive andsophisticated art.' That process isan ongoing one, as Cotton's version of Tillers' Faith has in turnbeen re-appropriated by Tillersin his monumental 199 5 workParadiso. But as Cotton said, 'Faithis always a gamble.'

Images by other contemporaryartists have figured in Cotton'seclectic visual language. NewZealand painter Dick Frizzell'sGrocer with moko ( 1 9 92) , from thatartist's controversial Tiki series,makes an appearance in Cotton's1994 work Sold. Again, appropriation is doubled back on itself inthis work, and Frizzell's FourSquare Man, stripped of his moko, /appears in Cotton's painting as ayagent for shady land deE ls.

Less specifkin ilieir meaningare the lava lamps which Cottonborrows from American conceptual artist Haim Steinbach. Figuringin a number of works including

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Daze (1994), their oleaginous fluids look back toCotton's earlier biomorphic works, and signal the artificial capture of constant states of flux . Likewise thebasketballs which appear in View Diamond line and anumber of other works from 1995 are a nod toanother American conceptualist, Jeff Koons, and aresimilarly ambiguous in their meaning. These worksshow Cotton's response to the Fiscal Envelope-theGovernment's proposed spending cap on a full andfinal settlement for Maori grievances. The snatches oftext in View call 'timeout' , or 'bluff', suggesting thatperhaps it is time for a whole new ball game to beplayed by Pakeha.

The list of guest stars in Cotton's works.could goon-Op artist Victor Vasarely, surrealist Salvador Dali,Japanese media artist Tatsuo Miyajima, landscapepainter Colin McCahon .. It is a remarkable line-up,and one that shows Cotton as an informed observer oflocal and international art debates. There is lightness

Picture painting, 994

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,

giant, half-set pudding. Numbers are perched tentatively on the slopes of the mountain, as they are in thecushion of Needlework (19 93), marking out the landfor surveying.

Images of surveying figure prominently in numerous other works by Cotton . The layers of landscapeswhich appear in works such as View, Viewed (1997)and Middle north (1997) recall the earliest Europeandepictions of New Zealand, made by artist-cartographers such as Charles Heaphy Cotton has described hisown work as 'landscape painting but not in an obviousway. The landscapes within these paintings are generic- they 're based on specific places but they are notdepictions . . . here is also a theme of ourneying in thework, which reflects what Maori, as a people, are stilldoing.' This sense of ourneying is apparent in Cotton's

Needlework,1993

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use of cartogr aphic landscapes,which move both towards andable destination or distant

here are other, mor e com-plex images and metaphors basedon landscape at play in Cotton'sworks. One of these is Wake whichshows a canoe constructed from adensely wrought lattice of sma llerlandscapes and other images.Cotton found inspiration for 'thispainting in the works of Buck Nin,and what Cotton described as thesenior Maori artist's consistent reworking of waka and land '. Ninsaid of his own paintings: whenyou look through the latticeworkyou see the soul of the land. Thepower and thrust of the prow issymbolic of the directions of allaspects of Maori endeavour andreflects the character of the Maorias it adapts and forges new pathsin NZ society.' Inscribed in Cotton's Wake are a number of texts,including 'Ahab't e captainwho fatally pursued Moby Dick,and Tawhao -flotsam jetsam,perhaps indicating the very mixedcrew that now populates the vessel.Wake can be seen as presenting thehope tha t they can paddle in the

s a m e d i r ~ ~ t i o n .Contemporary w ith that paint

ing is The Plant. Similarly composedof fragm'ented landscapes, AllanSmfth has described it 'unfoldingbefore the viewer like the dashboard for a post-colonial video

ll

game.' Unlike Wake, the landscapes in The Plant fail tocoalesce into a unified image . Instead they fluctuate,overlapping and dissolving into one ano ther, filteringin and out of view. The Plant is perhaps another reflection of what Cotton was suggesting in his pot plantimages: that Maori and colonial Pakeha had vastlydifferent perspectives on the land, and that ourcontemporary viewpoints are formulated from thathistory. This work, like View and Diamond Line (1995),was made in the context of the Fiscal Envelope, whichshowed that history to be a continuing one.

Numbers and texts recur throughout Cotton swork, having moved emphatically into the foregroundin his recent painting s. As we have seen, surveyors'markings are a key source for this, as are Maori figurative paintings. At Rongopai, for example paintedimages of an.cestors are also identified by writtennames, printed up in the fine Gothic script learnedfrom the missionaries. An adaptation of a k ~ s y . s -ems of know ed e, this f u r Maori

preserve t eir identity and history in the face ofpervasive change.

Cotton's texts have a similarly mnemonic function.The digital clocks or LED readouts that figure in a

\ P number of works, including Daze =efer to specific.Y . \ dates. One is 1865 , the year the Maori Land Court

ov \ was instituted.As a result , Maori were forced to make-< o-f' written claim to their tribal lands, and transferCP ' ~ . J

Shane Cotton Works 1998

Documents

Transcript of Shane Cotton Works 1998