Reuben Paterson
Recent Painting
7 - 31 May 2003
Reuben Paterson’s new works leave the more direct references to his Maori ancestry behind. Gone are the kowhaiwhai and the tiki images. Instead, the artist has sourced imagery and designs from his collective memory - fabric worn by his family - 1950’s dresses worn by his grandmother, a tie worn by his father in the 1970’s. Paterson is again claiming his heritage.
The new paintings are from my mother’s side. She comes from a line of adoption - gran, mum, and my full-blooded sister, who my parents had at a very young age. Three generations of women whose adoptions were the result of pressures of the ages in which they reside…. When dad passed he’d made an effort to contact his daughter, my mother learnt of her birth mother, and the tragedy of the place and time in which she resided. She has a long story, one that I had to listen to carefully picking up the remaining crumbs and putting together her clues. That’s when a mundane photo can be fullfilling… In these photos she has an incredible figure, hugged in beautifully printed clothes that verge on costume. I still have some of dad’s clothes; I don’t have any of hers. I can’t smell them now; they make me sneeze with dust. How dare dust repel me from memory!… Fabric. I have this vision of my gran, romantic, a cocktail in hand (she liked a drink!), pulling out frocks of memory. And all these 60’s inspired designs give memory. They contain koru and waves that sparkle in memorizing colours and designs.
I have needed a break from the kowhaiwhai images I have been painting, but the continual reference to whanau strengthens in this new exhibition so that it is inclusive of both my mother’s, and father’s sides.
Paterson graduated from Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland in 1997. In the same year he was selected as one of three recipients of the Moet and Chandon Art Fellowship - one of the youngest and only the second Maori artist to be selected. The fellowship awarded him with a six week residency in France which allowed him to both paint and study fashion in Paris - something which has a big influence on his work.
Since then Paterson has steadily built up a history of exhibiting in alternative spaces as well as being included in a number of significant museum exhibitions, most recently Techno Maori at the City Gallery / Pataka Art Museum in Wellington, Purangiaho: Seeing Cleary at the Auckland Art Gallery and The Koru and the Kowhaiwhai at the Pataka Art Museum. This will be his first solo exhibition.
Past materials have included airbrushed paint, tie dyed fabric and glitter craft balls. Rather than be restricted by traditional notions of what art materials should be, Paterson weaves his way through craft and fashion manufacturing techniques. Paterson is unashamedly populist in his choice of materials - It’s not so much the design side of fashion that appeals to me but the technical side. I like experimenting with different materials. (June 1997) This exhibition, with its inspiration taken from fabric designs brings the artist’s interests full circle.