Shane Cotton: Moerewa-Liquid Sleep by Anthony Byrt
Shane Cotton (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Rangi, Ngāti Hine, Te Uri Taniwha) is one of New Zealand’s most celebrated living painters who has been widely exhibited both here and in Australia. In Moerewa-Liquid Sleep , award-winning art writer Anthony Byrt takes us on a compelling and illuminating journey of exploration into Shane Cotton’s painting practice over more than three decades. Over this time, Shane Cotton has produced a very large body of work in many different styles.
Shane Cotton and Anthony Byrt are whanaunga, both sons of Te Tai Tokerau, who share a long friendship. The many conversations they have had, and journeys they have taken together, will have undoubtedly contributed greatly to Anthony Byrt’s eloquent scholarly interpretation of Shane Cotton’s artworks. And how these relate to Aotearoa’s complicated bicultural history and the long collision, sometimes productive and at times devastating, which occurred in Te Tai Tokerau in the 19th Century. Anthony Byrt regards Shane Cotton as our greatest visionary of that collision.
It was a volatile era in which many momentous events took place. First was the toxic outcome of the relationship between Hongi Hika and Thomas Kendall. Then came He Whakaputanga in 1835 and Te Tiri o Waitangi in 1984. This was followed by the wars between the British Crown and Hongi Hika and Te Ruki Kawiti in 1845-46, and on to the land confiscations and prophet movements of the 1860’s and 1870’s.
Shane Cotton: Moerewa-Liquid Sleep is a handsome volume richly illustrated with full-page colour illustrations of Shane Cotton’s paintings. As I look closely at these, I am entranced, yet often puzzled, by the meaning behind the myriad of motifs which reappear in his artworks eg in Tunatown Dreaming Moerewa 1979 we see a dancing couple connected to a landscape, which leads to a Nākahi serpent, which connects both to a robin and an upturned Victorian side table. There are disconnected objects, too. Open hands referencing Ringatū, asteroid-like rocks, floating phrases, an upside-down tree. Beneath them all is the site where the dreaming is taking place-a solitary tent in an otherwise empty landscape. Byrt shines a light on their meaning.
Pots are reoccurring images in Shane Cotton’s paintings. One of my personal favourites is Whakapiri Atu te Whenua which translates as Retain the Land and is attributed to Te Kooti. After Shane Cotton was invited to join the faculty of a groundbreaking degree programme in Māori visual arts at Massey University, he immersed himself in learning about Māori culture and Mātauranga Māori and became fascinated with the19th Century figurative paintings in Māori meeting houses on the East Coast, especially Rongopai.
in Whakapiri Atu te Whenua he has appropriated the large pot in the centre from Rongopai. The smaller vessels which surround it are containers for soil, for the whenua that belongs to Māori, while the flags, pā palisades and the poles symbolise the 19th century wars of Te Kooti, a Māori leader who was the founder of the Ringatū religion. He fought government troops and settlers to try to stop them from unjustly confiscating Māori lands on the East Coast. The painting carries a powerful message about this great injustice suffered by Māori.
Around 2020, Rongopai-like pots again became prominent in Shane Cotton’s paintings and in a large and popular series of prints at about the same time. Maunga, his massive mural which covers five stories of Excelsior House in downtown Auckland, features twenty-five large pots. Each carries the name of a mountain in Aotearoa.
People from many cultures have come to Tāmaki Makaura to settle and, as Byrt explains, these elegant vessels are again seen as containers for land, but this time as metaphors for the way we carry pieces of our homes with us, and in us, as we migrate. All the pots from this mural are reproduced on three double-page spreads in Liquid Dreams.
Shane Cotton: Moerewa-Liquid Sleep is a landmark volume. For art and art history students it will be an indispensable guide to Shane Cotton’s painting practice and artistic vision and teach them how he has drawn on Māori, Pākehā and international influences in his artworks. The political messages in his history paintings will also build their understanding of our bicultural history.
Byrt’s compelling and erudite investigation into Shane Cotton’s artworks should also appeal greatly to all art lovers both here and overseas. It is a taonga that I will come back to again.
Reviewer: Lyn Potter
Auckland University Press
