


Shane Cotton
Super Radiance, 2024
acrylic on linen
1200 x 1800mm
A questioning of bicultural identity, and our collective cultural identity is at the heart of Shane Cotton’s practice (Ngā Puhi, Ngāti Rangi, Ngāti Hine and Te Uri Taniwha). The painting...
A questioning of bicultural identity, and our collective cultural identity is at the heart of Shane Cotton’s practice (Ngā Puhi, Ngāti Rangi, Ngāti Hine and Te Uri Taniwha). The painting Super Radiance formed part of Cotton's recent exhibition New Painting, which delved into the collision of Indigenous and European time systems, warping time, memory, and nature through the lens of his Ngāpuhi whakapapa. The works place ancestral figures in surreal, cosmic landscapes, exploring hybridities, transformation, and the cyclical nature of history. Cotton’s paintings blend history, mythology, and technicolour imagery, reflecting on the layered, nonlinear relationship between the past, present, and future in Aotearoa.