B.
Teasers
Behind the scenes
'Teasers' are the short but enticing clips that go out in advance of a big new movie.
The word doesn't sound quite appropriate for a medium as modest and retiring as painting. But with the central painting in Shane Cotton's soon-to-open exhibition The Hanging Sky, it feels right to make an exception – at nine metres across, this is emphatically a wide-screen work. Herewith, some 'advance clips' of Cotton's The Haymaker Series I-V.
Shane Cotton The Haymaker Series I-V 2012, detail from panel IV, Coloured Dirt Dreaming. Acrylic on canvas. Courtesy the artist
Shane Cotton The Haymaker Series I-V 2012, detail from panel II, Diamonds and Circles. Acrylic on canvas. Courtesy the artist
Shane Cotton The Haymaker Series I-V 2012, detail from panel III, SEE.R. Acrylic on canvas. Courtesy the artist
Shane Cotton The Haymaker Series I-V, 2012, detail from panel I, Haymaker V 2.0. Acrylic on canvas. Courtesy the artist
Shane Cotton The Haymaker Series I-V 2012, detail from panel IV, Coloured Dirt Dreaming. Acrylic on canvas. Courtesy the artist
Shane Cotton The Haymaker Series I-V 2012, detail from panel III, SEE.R. Acrylic on canvas. Courtesy the artist
Shane Cotton The Haymaker Series I-V 2010, detail from panel V, Staging Post. Acrylic on canvas. Courtesy the artist
Shane Cotton The Haymaker Series I-V 2012, detail from panel I, Haymaker V 2.0. Acrylic on canvas. Courtesy the artist
Related
Exhibition
Shane Cotton: The Hanging Sky
City Gallery Wellington from 15 June until 6 October
Touring Australia and New Zealand 2012–13
Collection
Shane Cotton The Haymaker Series I–V
Haymaker suggests the act of making at the right moment in time. It’s also a boxing term for a powerful punch. In this massive, psychedelic, sci-fi-like painting, Shane Cotton has gathered together signs, symbols and references with elements from past paintings and unloaded them into the ether of te pito o te ao, the centre of the Māori universe. Time, power, Māori culture and tradition, semiotics and art history all play out across these five panels.The carved wooden figure shown in the first panel is Arnold Manaaki Wilson’s 1956 'He Tangata, He Tangata', Cotton’s homage to this pioneering Māori artist he respected greatly. The final panel of the work is titled Staging Post, and suggests a moment for taking account and preparing to set forth again. Here Cotton acknowledges two contemporary Māori artists, both of whom feature in Te Wheke – Peter Robinson (the chain) and Michael Parekowhai (the doe).
(Te Wheke, 2020)