Thirty years of creating; it is a lifetime of work for artist Reuben Paterson. “I think about my practice as having a life - I’ve described it as being my longest relationship. I adore and love this relationship very much,” he said.
This dedication to craft can be seen in Paterson’s newly opened survey show, The Only Dream Left, at City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi. For the exhibition, Paterson decided to put total trust in the survey’s curators, Aaron Lister, the gallery’s senior curator, and Karl Chitham, Director of Dowse Art Museum.
“Aaron and Karl had an idea, a curatorial premise for the survey. They’ve curated clarity and emotion in each room, so it means you don’t leave with a visual experience, you leave with joy,” said Paterson. “I personally believe that a lot of the content drivers in my work have not surfaced until now. A lot of my work talks about spirituality, and spirituality has never been given a true space. And also I think even the gay content hasn’t been given that platform either. We live in such a beautiful new age now that all of these precious things finally have a space to talk. They’ve been such a big part of who and what I do but they’ve never been heard, or never been seen, so for me this survey really sets a full voice for the first time.”
The survey show includes paintings, sculptures, installation and animation spanning over 25 years, and one new work, Koro. The work was made as a call and response to Paterson’s Guide Kaiārahi, a 10m high glass and crystal waka installed outside Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki in 2021. Paterson tells a story of the opening of Guide Kaiārahi by Ngāti Whātua, how when he arrived at dawn for the ceremony all of the lights in the reflection pool that the work sits in were not working.
“I assumed it might have been about the work wanting a specific person to activate it,” said Paterson. “As soon as mana whenua blew into the conch, at that very moment that breath met shell, the lights came on, and cast all of the reflections around the gallery walls. So all this time later I’ve really thought about that activation as being this moment that created a type of light language between the generations of the past and the present. All that space and whakapapa gets connected by rainbows and light orbs into the past.”
In its first layer, Koro is a pūtātara (conch shell trumpet), “embedded with crystals like a barnacle family that project the trumpets call onto the walls in the gallery space.” Koro specifically acknowledges Paterson’s grandfather Jack, a sand miner, and great-grandfather John, a builder, and the connection between generations who have worked with their hands using similar materials in different ways. A month prior to installing the work at the gallery, Paterson found out that his great-grandfather John had constructed the Wellington Town Hall Te Whare Whakarauika which stands directly opposite the gallery.
“I also wanted to honour this idea of how sand is made from shells and rocks - that we live in cities made from shells, that our cities come from our shores and our beaches. And particularly to my grandfather Jack who mined the white sands of Matatā, which then became the building materials for our cities,” Paterson said. “Things appear for their purpose - I don’t have to force any of the content because my family already want to be part of it. All of the materials that make up this art work are builders materials. We didn’t have concrete so I got a piece of the original concrete from the townhall and this sits under the plinth, to expose those layers of genealogy.”
Paterson’s career to date is significant: solo and group exhibitions, residencies, and work in major public collections, across the globe. The artist’s connection to the Cook Islands officially began 20 years ago, with the group show, Iki and thanks for all the Ika, at the Cook Islands National Museum in 2003.
Represented by Bergman Gallery since 2010, Paterson’s connection to the Cook Islands is one of place and people, from his descent lines of Ngāti Rangitihi, Ngāi Tūhoe and Tūhourangi to The Garden of Seven Stones in Ngatangiia - “those descent lines and connections can all be traced back to here because it’s all a part of the whakapapa.” His painting/installation, When the Sun Rises and the Shadows Flee, which is part of the survey show, was originallyshown in 2005 at the Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane) before being purchased by Dunedin Public Art Gallery. Described as “part retro-billboard and part South Pacific fantasy” by Ben Bergman, director of Bergman Gallery, the work is based on Paterson’s memories of the beaches of Rarotonga following a visit in 2001.
Paterson undertook an Artist in Residence with BCA Gallery (pre-cursor to Bergman Gallery) in 2010, followed by a solo show Aere E Akamotu – Start to Finish. Paterson’s work has been shown by Bergman Gallery many times since, most notably paired with Tivaivai artist Tungane Broadbent in Today, Tomorrow and Yesterday in 2017 and again at the 2022 Aotearoa Art Fair.
2023, a highly successful survey show, and for Paterson, there were questions of what would come next. In May the artist is moving to New York. Paterson fell in love with the city in 2006 during his three-month International Studio Curatorial Programme as part of the James Wallace Art Award Development Prize, and again when he visited New York last year.
“Surveys can often feel like an attainment of a career because there’s the acknowledgement and respect that comes from the years invested. And I just started thinking about what my practice might need, thinking about offering my practice the biggest world possible. I’m not after anything other than to value and honour my art practice and to give it the world,” Paterson said.
“It’s that beautiful precipice of not knowing. The survey show really honours that too, that precipice of 30 years of work done. And it’s still open when I leave and start my new journey.”
The Only Dream Left. 25 February - 18 June 2023, City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi
Bergman Gallery
Tāmaki Makaurau & Avarua
Auckland & Rarotonga
