The issue of biculturalism is one of complex histories, identities, and values that intertwine and explode with intensity and suspense. ‘The Hanging Sky’ at Brisbane’s Institute of Modern Art, is an exhibition of work by New Zealand artist Shane Cotton who takes these controversies and unsettles them even further. As curator Justin Paton explains, “biculturalism is not where the paintings end, it’s one of the places they leap off from”.
Cotton plunges the viewer through a spiraling descent of dark skies, dramatic red imagery, and deep, unfolding landscapes. English and Maori words literally collide in space with iconography, creating a fusion of cultures that places biculturalism as the fuel for a gripping subject matter with twisted translations and a specifically poignant energy. “Far from wanting to settle the arguments, Shane seems to revel in their drama and energy”, says Paton, “people say he makes paintings in order to address issues of biculturalism but you could say, instead, that he uses biculturalism, with all its dramas, in order to make a compelling painting”.
Informed by his own mixed background, Cotton borrows biblical text from Anglican ministers of his family and imagery from the iwi of Nga Puhi culture, for example ‘mokomokai’ (Maori preserved heads) and the faces of famous chiefs such as Hongi Hika. This mashing of tribal and Christian imagery points to the turbulence of New Zealand’s post-colonial history, as well as a prominent current concern in contemporary art: that of cultural appropriation. Cotton forces us to question what it means when Indigenous imagery is carried into new contexts, and simultaneously presents us with the unsettling and ominous traits of a culture in transformation. Paton believes that “biculturalism is not a settled state. It’s a process and a problem – something that’s thrashed out day by day. And in Shane’s paintings it’s literally up in the air. He launches viewers into skies full of competing translations”.
‘The Hanging Sky’ invokes a sense of vertigo in the viewer. Loaded with adventure and mystery, the works suggest a leap into a different reality of mythic underworlds or sci-fi fantasies. Surreal and super-natural, these spaces provoke the viewer with contradictions: religious symbols juxtaposed with text from popular culture, or weapons alongside delicate birds and flowers. Plummeting and soaring birds – be they messengers, symbolic animals, or native treasures, give the paintings a sense of flight. Of this tension, Paton says “the title of the painting The Hanging Sky, which is also the title of the show, sums it up for me – that idea of a painting as a space of suspense and potential. The painter’s job is to deepen and activate that space. And then it’s our job to fall into it”.
Cotton’s work instigates conversations around native and introduced cultures and their imagery, cultural borrowing and appropriation, and the issue of biculturalism in both historical and contemporary contexts. His fusion of cultural imagery challenges, intrigues, provokes and perplexes us. By reaching into the past, his curiosity is enriched and allows us to leap into an unknown future. Cotton does not give the luxury of this being a pleasant journey; rather he embraces the drama, friction and unsettling aspects, and re-presents these as a space to get lost in and to find our own conclusions.
Institute of Modern Art
Until 2 March, 2013
Brisbane
Tuara, 2010, acrylic on linen, 300 x 190cm
Easy Forever, Forever Easy, 2011, acrylic on linen, 265 x 265cm
Images courtesy the artist, Michael Lett, Auckland; Christchurch Art Gallery, Te Puna o Waiwhetu; and Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne and Sydney
