Reuben
Paterson:
True Voyage
A huge chandelier glass and acrylic canoe is a talisman of Auckland artist Reuben Paterson’s identity, for whom glitter, orbs and rainbows light the way.
Image credit: Reuben Paterson, A Crucifixion, 2012, glitter and mixed media on canvas, 195 x 300 cm. Collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia. Photo: Schwere Webber Courtesy the artist and the NGV
Artist Reuben Paterson aligns with the concept that ‘everything living and non-living’ is connected to the ‘primeval parents’ of Earth Mother and of the Sky Father.
Paterson, who is of Ngāti Rangitihi, Ngāi Tūhoe, Tūhourangi, Scottish and English ancestry, was commissioned by the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki and the Edmiston Trust to reproduce a waka, or giant Māori watercraft, from chandelier glass, transparent acrylic and stainless steel.
For Paterson this waka is real and present, not the stuff of myth or fairy tale.
His ten-metre sculpture Guide Kaiārahi (2021), now on display in the gallery’s forecourt, is based on a war canoe. The decorative elements at the front (tauihu) guide the vessel, and the decorative elements within the stern (taurapa) protect the navigators on board and are also indicative of the vessel’s purpose.
Paterson, 47 years old, learned of these vessels through his late father and through his primary school education. As well as war vessels, wakas were used for trading and fishing too.
One waka story takes place in 1886, when tourists on a whaleboat on Lake Tarawera were checking out the great natural wonder of the famed pink and white silica terraces. The tourists saw a waka suddenly appear, then vanish. Days later, the Mount Tarawera volcano erupted, burying the area in thick mud and ash, and killing an estimated 108 to 120 people.
“As a story, it’s so linked to the truth of that time that, even if it was an apparition forewarning the eruption of Mount Tarawera, it also echoed the startling truths of the typhoid epidemic in that area,” says Paterson from his ...Subscribe to read this article in full
