REUBEN PATERSON

The world-bending art of Reuben Paterson (b. 1973, Auckland, New Zealand: Ngāti Rangitihi, Ngāi Tūhoe, Tūhourangi, Scottish) reaches back to his childhood experiences of the glistening waters and sparkling black sands of Tamaki Makarau's West Coast. His signature use of glitter carries all these memories and the people, presences, and histories to which they connect. Always pushing what he describes as the 'limitless' material and conceptual possibilities of glitter, Paterson's paintings, sculptures, animations, and installations share an optical energy that harnesses the mesmerising effects of pattern, colour, and texture. Paterson uses the transformative properties of light to reach beyond appearances and pry open the complex histories and tensions that sit just beneath the surface of all things. His art is made in celebration of exchange and encounter, hybridity and fluidity, spirituality and sexuality, and is especially attuned to the dynamics of queer identity and whakapapa (genealogy)-based modes of cultural knowledge.