By Ian | 19 September, 2012
Yesterday was Regan Tamanui’s birthday, an artist from Down Under (Australia) who is very creative. His main line of work is large stenciled murals, but he also does free hand spraying. He started the “Stuckist” movement in Australia.
He had turned 40 and he had decided to paint a mural to commemorate the passing of the event. So he allowed me to accompany him to a dilapidated Russian Tank Base a few miles north of Berlin, Germany in Bernau. The base was falling apart and was an ideal place for sprayers to leave their mark.
I watched him go to work. The building, the atmosphere, the painting environment, the process, the cans and he himself, empowered me to write a couple of words.
The piece is called The Māorist.
Interesting for me during the writing was the link to his ancestral lines. His ancestors are Māori’s. The Māoris where the ones who created those interesting large upper torso stone sculptures on the Easter Islands. During the day he had been painting large figures and they reminded me of those on the Easter Islands, and I wondered how those artists of 700 years ago would now “do their thing”.
Māorist is a “Kunstwort”, a new word. I wanted a noun to describe him in some special way, however I was in a quandery about if I should use Māorist or Māorartist. I decided on Māorist. I later asked Regan which he preferred: I had chosen the right one.