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Rusiate
is an
exciting contemporary artist from Fiji. His ideas are
nourished from his direct family who have had gifted him
with a strong cultural identity from their contributions
as Fijian artistic icons. Add to this his influences
from a modernist tradition and you have an energetic
body of work grounded in ancestral history.
Rusiate’s acrylic and oil paintings pay reference to
traditional tapa textiles with their geometric patterns
and shapes. Encoded within these design elements are
personal totemic iconography and narratives that source
both the artist’s contemplations of contemporary popular
culture and ancestral stories.In these essentially
graphic works, the artist assembles layers of paint,
lines and pattern as he would collect stories and
snippets of personal memorabilia. Rusiate has a strong
connection to contemporary popular culture and has
participated in music, poetry, film, dance and multi
media arts. Some of the works resemble story boards or
comic strips with the images broken up and reassembled
in a collage mixing past and present.
Rusiate states his influences are many in the modernist
tradition, ranging form Paul Klee, Joan Miro, Basquait
and Picasso. His regard for these Masters reinforces a
need to look at his ancestral roots and like Picasso he
dips deep into the well to draw the totemic icons and
patterns of his family. He indulges his pleasure in
line, pattern and colour to reinforce his personal
mythic stories. He also utilises the tool of erasure and
scrapes back into the highly textured surfaces to reveal
underlying structures and stories.
Colour for Rusiate has both personal significance and
historical reference. Mostly his graphic black and white
design elements form a structure to imbed snippets of
tapa, text and images. The colour of the tapa is often
ochres or black with vivid warm tones of yellow, red and
brown enlivening the canvas. Only occasionally do the
cool tones of blue temper the heat. This work invites
the viewer to come close to decipher the stories.
This body of work “Tribal Revival” is a testimonial to
the artist’s endeavour to unite his ancestral roots with
contemporary popular culture. He seeks to identify with
and utilise artists in the modernist tradition who
themselves looked back to primitivism as a fresh start.
In addition, true to his age, he then uses popular
culture, in particular film and the media as a major
influence. With this vehicle he loads up his ancestral
and mythic stories to take us on a journey.
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