Idol, 2002
oil on canvas
1400 x 1400 mm
signed and dated lower right: “S Cotton 2002”
Provenance: Private Collection, New Zealand
‘Cotton’s paintings are fundamentally iconological assemblages of figures, objects, colours and texts - they do not represent or embody a singular moment or space, even when place is iconographically evoked. Yet whilst their structures have tended away from the (material) architectural-like forms of his mid-1990s work to the (immaterial) screen and computer graphic-like forms of his more recent work (including the most recent air-brushed panels) all the paintings nevertheless attest to a real occupation of and across time and space.’
(Blair French, ‘Shane Cotton: Painting, Postcolonialism and the Age of Globalisation’ in Shane Cotton, Lara Strongman (ed), Wellington: City Gallery, 2004, p. 104.)