Russ Flatt wins 2020 Wallace Art Awards Paramount Award

Congratulations Russ Flatt

Last night at the 2020 Wallace Art Awards Russ Flatt was awarded the Wallace Arts Trust Paramount Award for his photograph, Kōruru / Knucklebones.

Russ Flatt, Kōruru / Knucklebones

In their notes the 5 Judges - Sara Hughes, Robert Jahnke, Judy Millar, Jae Hoon Lee and Gregor Kregar - wrote:

Haunting emotionality - an image which returns scrutiny of it with an increasing sense of tension, as if the hard scatter of the knucklebones plays towards some vague event having just passed or about to happen. The composition of the two figures resembles a clasp, a hand within a hand, while evoking identities of motherhood, gender and ethnicity in some uncertain past.

Russ himself writes:

My mother was one of nine daughters.

She was brought up in rural Hawkes Bay in the small town of Wairoa.

Her family whāngai-ed a local boy they nicknamed Mickey.

Mickey was my Uncle and he and my Mum were close.

He stood out in our Māori family because of his fair skin and flaming red hair.

For us, being whāngai was not about losing your parents but more about the community and whanau coming together to raise you as one of their own.

My photograph depicts a red-headed boy and a young Māori woman sitting together on a dirt floor playing Kōruru (Knucklebones).

Kōruru was pre-Nintendo Nintendo.

Although it was sometimes seen as a 'girls' game it would probably be described in 21st Century terms as 'non-binary.'

It was centred around the joy of friendship and the connections you could make as young people playing games together.

It was a way of finding your tribe through play.

It was also highly addictive and took skill and practice.

Kōruru taught me early on that there were skills involved in being part of a group. It also taught me that extending your circle of friends depended on your skill for the game at hand.

My practice works within the framework of identity, roleplay, memory and sexuality.

Kia whakatomuri te haere whakamua - I walk backwards into the future with my eyes fixed on the past.

Kia ora.