![]() Be nice: If a polite way cannot be found to phrase what it is you want to say, don't say anything at all. We are not a place for gossip, rumors, or manipulative or misleading content.Ĥ. Be truthful: All posts/comments must be factually accurate and verifiable. Be welcoming: It is important that everyone from newbies to OG Trekkers feel welcome no matter their gender, sexual orientation, religion or race.ģ. Be constructive: All posts/comments must contribute positively to r/StarTrek and the lives of those who participate here.Ģ. He thinks it’s his most powerful work yet.Click here for the full & detailed guidelinesġ. On June 7, Flatt will open his fourth solo show at Tim Melville Gallery in Auckland, this time diving into memories of underage nightclubbing, and catching the night bus home. “I use those kind of thought processes, and then I twist it around and have some fun with it.” “When you think about memory and your childhood or teenage years, it’s usually the bad stuff, or things that happened that were quite hard, that come to mind,” Flatt explains. The house is incredibly suburban and a 90s frosted hairstyle makes an appearance, daring you to laugh. The boys look defiant and vulnerable and serene. He made three pictures, set around a dinner table, in a lounge and in a bedroom, that shows the family dynamic when a teenage boy and his school friend are caught exploring their sexuality. “That gave me permission not to feel any constraints about what I want to make for them,” Flatt says. The judges liked one of his more provocative pictures from Paper Planes, one which shows a young boy hiding under his parents’ bed, as they fool around on top. “I think people maybe see a little bit of themselves in them, somehow.”įor the Auckland Festival of Photography, on now until June 24, Flatt was commissioned to create a new body of work. “I’m glad you see that, because I feel like some of them are just so ridiculous,” Flatt says. Mainly, though, they’re kind of hilarious pictures. If I look longer, I remember the pressure of performing in your chosen sport or art, how overwhelming it could all get, and the nub of alienation at the heart of teenage endeavours. “Like popcorny stale carpet,” Flatt supplies. Looking at these pictures, I instantly remembered exactly how Skateland in Glenfield used to smell. There are the spangly shirts and flared trousers, the grim-faced coach in a leather jacket and 80's moustache, the wide lapels and high, teased ponytails. ![]() Nationals, his third solo show, recalls Flatt’s time as a young competitive roller skater on Auckland’s North Shore. His pictures aren’t always so serious or impersonal, though. ![]() It was nice to do it and then lay them out and see the subtle differences in different gazes.” “It was about the perception of brown guys within our country, and how skin colour can connect a group of people, but how individual we are. “I was looking at the physiognomy of brown guys,” he says. He graduated from the University of Auckland’s Elam Art School with a postgraduate diploma in 2013, and hisĮnd-of-year presentation was picked up by the Mangere Arts Centre for what would become his first solo show,Perceiving Identity.Ī striking part of that show is a series of portraits of about 40 Maori and Pacific Island men, shot square-on and shirtless. Three years later, they’d form his second solo show, Paper Planes.Īs a gay Maori man a small subset of an ethnic minority in a small country who’s spent much of his adult life abroad, Flatt’s probably used to feeling and thinking like an outsider. ![]() But knowing they were deeply personal, he put them to one side until the time was right to exhibit them. They’re carefully staged portraits, beautifully lit and technically skillful. The first art works Flatt made are meticulous recreations of childhood memories to do with his English RNZAF engineer father, Maori mother and sister, all of whom had died within two years of each other. He’s tall and narrow with big, serious eyes and you can sense a steely self-possession behind his quiet, careful way of speaking. This month in Auckland, there’s a fantastic flurry of new works from photographer Russ Flatt, an artist who makes pictures that are profound, emotionally engaging, and slyly entertaining, all at once.įlatt spent more than a decade shooting high-end fashion editorials in London and New York, before launching his art practice in New Zealand in 2013. ![]()
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