Shane Cotton, 'Emergence (No Ordinary Bird)', 2022
Moving image file, 2:45 minutes
NFT Edition of 25
NZD$1500
Release Date: Midnight (NZST), Friday 25 November, 2022

Shane Cotton is renowned for his painted explorations of Aotearoa New Zealand culture and identity. This practice of painterly and cultural exploration enters the virtual space with Emergence (No Ordinary Bird), a new moving image artwork investigating alternate realms and media. With this experimental artwork, Cotton draws on a recent painting entitled No Ordinary Bird (2022) that is currently on display at the Wairau Art Gallery in the Hundertwasser Centre in Whangarei. Here we see the kōwhaiwhai painting that flanks the central human pou form enlivened as manaia, bird-like figures depicting spiritual power, connection and stewardship. In Emergence the entities that inhabit the original painting are encountered on an alternate plane of experience, evoking an animated sense of the metaphysical manifestations that emerge from the histories and narratives explored in his work.