Interview with Reuben Paterson
Reuben Paterson
Born 1973 in Auckland, New Zealand
Lives and works in Auckland
Reuben Paterson is a painter and installation artist who brings together contemporary materials with a timeless connection to his Ngati Rangitihi and Ngai Tuhoe
heritage. His paintings, objects and installations use glitter, foil and other shimmering materials to render formal arrangements that develop from a range of disparate sources. His work also draws on known and inherited histories, presenting them with the sheen and lustre of glitter and pattern to create a postmodern identity that is influenced as much by Andy Warhol’s Diamond Dust Shoes (1980) as by the traditional iconography of indigenous New Zealand. Each of his series of works is informed by the connection between cultural areas in New Zealand, their land and their ancestors. Drawing on themes of revelry, reverie and the sacred, Paterson uses dazzling op art techniques to engage with what is known as the whakapapa – the layers of genealogy, myth and knowledge that are central to Maori
consciousness.