Artist Biography
Born in Upper Hutt in 1964 and of both Māori and Pākehā (white) descent, Shane Cotton is one of New Zealand's leading contemporary artists. In 1998 Cotton studied painting at the University of Canterbury and later studied teaching at Christchurch College of Education. Since 1993 he has taught in the Māori Visual Arts program at Massey University, Wellington. Concerned with the complexity of New Zealand's colonial past and bi-cultural identity, Cotton's paintings incorporate references to both Māori and Pākehā culture through a vast lexicon of symbols, signs and words. Cotton has exhibited extensively in both New Zealand Aotearoa and Australia and in 2003 was the subject of a major survey exhibition at City Gallery, Wellington. Shane Cotton lives in Palmerston North, New Zealand, and is represented by Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland, and Sherman Galleries, Sydney.
Works
Te Waiwhariki 2004
Melanin face 2005
Gallery forest 2005
Broken water 2003
The second version 2005
Artist Statement
The World Turned Upside Down
His tongue stumbled, he was hard to understand.
Did they understand? 'He was quite mad?'
Certainly he was strange:
Jesus Christ mixed
With Papa, who 'turned the world upside down'.
Papa/Papatuanuku is Earth, and She was
by her sons turned over.
But this is a He – 'He is … ' and is
'the God that is in me' who is
Papa having to do with Earth
Huri with turning over
hia
From the poem-cycle Atua Wera by Kendrick Smithyman, Auckland, 1995, p. 13.
