INTERVIEW Tim Melville
PORTRAIT David K Shields
Kia whakatomuri te haere whakamua.
I walk backwards into the future with my eyes fixed on the past.
Transitioning from life as a successful fashion photographer in New York in the 90s/00’s, Russ Flatt returned to Aotearoa New Zealand to complete his postgraduate diploma in fine arts at the prestigious Elam art school in Tamaki Makaurau Auckland – his career as an artist, addressing notions of identity and belonging, has burgeoned to encompass also the modernities of drone and point cloud imaging technology, with his recent work te ahua. te wa. te atea.
RUSS FLATT (Ngāti Kahungunu) is a gay Māori artist.
“It took time to really feel comfortable with my cultural and sexual identity. Now, I’m very, very proud of who I am, and that’s empowering”
Flatt describes growing up in the suburbs of Auckland’s North Shore as feeling that “… you don’t really know you’re different because there are no kind of words for it. That’s not until you get older and you reach puberty you understand you need to spread your wings.” It was a world that was too small for an adventurous boy with big dreams, and he ended up in London. “I would see things and think, oh, that’d make a nice photograph, so I just took the next step.” The unlikely result was a decade-long career as a high-profile fashion photographer in New York. “It was amazing. It opened me up to this whole new world and what it could mean as an artist.”
When his whānau called, needing him back home, he returned to Aotearoa New Zealand. “It wasn’t about me anymore – my whole life till then had been about me. It was time to come back.” After the passing of his father, then his mother, and his sister, all within a short space of time, Flatt entered what he calls “the dark night of my soul”.
“Recurring images came to me in visions and dreams. I’d often wake up screaming or wailing because I wasn’t able to disconnect from these visions. I felt the only way I could work through it was to make a visual reference to these specific moments.” This developed into a body of work which helped deliver him from the anguish of then into a more peaceful now. Many of these hidden memories are staged ritualistically throughout his work. “
I’m interested in making staged images look like moments that have just been caught. It straddles that fine line between tableau, documentary, and portraiture.”
These new images were cathartic and, quite unintentionally, became his first body of work as a practising artist. “I made them for myself, as a way to process that loss and grief. I didn’t process the film for a year and a half. I wasn’t ready. I just wanted to park it and get on with my life.” Eventually, though, he gathered the images together, and used them to apply to Auckland University’s Elam School of Fine Arts where he completed a PGDip FA. He graduated in 2013, having won the University’s Post-graduate Photography Prize.
“I wanted to shift into being an artist and making work that was meaningful.
The interesting thing about recalling memory is that it’s really subjective. And it shifts and changes over time. It’s all around us. It’s a fun place to draw from but it’s not specific.
Recently Flatt’s practice has expanded to encompass drone and Point Cloud imaging technology, through which he has produced both still photographs and the moving image work, Te ahua, te wa, te atea, which was first presented at MTG Napier in 2022.
The video includes hawk’s-eye views of significant sites where the iwi to which Flatt belongs – Ngāti Kahungunu – were alienated by Pakeha settlement of Heretaunga Hawkes Bay in the 1860s. “I want to contextualise my work within a Māori methodology. It’s heavy stuff, figuring out my place in that, and where we are as a nation, as a people, as Māori. But I’m energised by that and it’s a nice place to be.”
His work is held in public collections including Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, The Arts House Trust, the University of Auckland, the NZ Maritime Museum and Auckland Council.
He is represented by Tim Melville Gallery in Auckland. www.timmelville.com
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