Breaking Bread: Reuben Paterson - Artist

I must tell you straight up that your work absolutely blows us away, and so many guests that come into the dining room here at Attica are mesmerised by your piece. Do you ever observe the reactions of people viewing your art? And if so, what do you most notice?

I am always deeply moved when I hear how people respond to the work, especially in a space like Attica where the senses are already heightened. As artists, we experience our work very differently during the act of creation. We are close to it, inside it, and often thinking about its construction, its demands and its intentions. So, when I hear how others meet the work in the world, it becomes a reminder that each piece has a life beyond me.

I don’t always get to witness those reactions firsthand, but when I do, I notice a kind of pause that happens. People soften, lean in or fall quiet for a moment. Sometimes they smile without realising it. Glitter has this way of drawing in the eye, but beyond the shimmer there’s usually a moment where someone softens or becomes reflective. What I appreciate most is that they give themselves permission to feel something and that is a huge privilege for any artist to witness.

How do you find your creativity? Do you have any rituals or routines that help you get in the creative mindset for work?

This is the longest love relationship I have had in my life. I treat creativity like a lover, a partner, a husband. He comes first, he comes last, he is every moment of every day, and we get along really well! Over the years we have learned how to live together, to move as one, and in that way the work often feels guided, as though it has its own timing and its own breath.

I believe creativity is a transmission. My role is to stay open, present and willing to follow where it leads. I do have private rituals that help me release the work from myself, to anchor it so it can journey into its own life and existence. Committing to this path means you allow yourself to be completely submerged in it. Everything becomes part of the creative mindset. Everything becomes an inspiration and feeds the relationship.

One of the first things people usually notice about your work is the use of glitter. Is this something you have always been drawn to?

Glitter has been with me from the beginning. I was first drawn to it through the west coast sands and the shimmer of moving water, long before I understood it as a human-made material. Our relationship started in the natural world, in the way light dances, remembers and returns. Glitter is something that only reveals itself in the movement between observer, object and light. That has always felt true to me because glitter refuses stillness. It flickers, shifts, behaves like light in motion, like stars travelling or like water stirred awake.

Psychologists even suggest that our attraction to shine is evolutionary, echoing the glint of fresh water, a signal of survival. I have always felt that instinct quietly inside me. When glitter shimmers, it stirs something ancient. So while people often see it as playful or decorative, for me it carries something much deeper.

In the human world, glitter occupies many spaces: environmental critique, queer celebration and political resistance. It is humorous, consequential, rebellious and beautiful. It is also democratic: everyone knows it, everyone has a memory attached to it, yet in the right context it becomes transformative. Glitter refracts, reveals, obscures. It behaves spiritually, allowing the work to live on multiple levels at once.

My attraction to glitter comes from all these places: instinctive, cultural, spiritual and political. But mostly, I love it because it behaves like the world I come from. It refuses boundaries. It will not behave or remain contained. It moves across identities, disciplines and stories.

You recently moved from NZ to NYC. How is the big city going? And do you have any locals restaurant recommendations?

Moving from Aotearoa to New York has been exhilarating, disorienting and completely energising all at once. The city has its own pulse, its own weather system, its own intensity, and I have learned quickly that if you surrender to it, it gives so much back. It has stretched my practice and my imagination in ways I could not have predicted. New York is a place that reminds you to be brave.

As for food, I have been happily eating my way through the city. A few favourites so far:
Thai Diner for their Thai Disco Fries, smothered in coconut cream and curry, and Uncle Boons coconut sundae. Living close to Chinatown, winter has become all about the pho and noodles. And of course, in a city like this, how could I go past a Reuben sandwich. Katz’s deli is the classic.

Have you got a favourite piece of work that you have done, and why?

 It is difficult to choose a single favourite, because each work reflects who I was at a particular moment in my life. But there are two works whose journeys continue to shape me in very meaningful ways.

The Wharenui That Dad Built (2000) will always sit at the centre of my practice. I made it not only as a celebration of my father, but as a mihi [thank you] to him, a way of placing his presence on a gallery wall. Over time, the work has grown with him and with me. It was also a turning point in my making. It was the first time I achieved a perfectly hard edge using a material as unruly as glitter, a moment where control and chaos finally aligned. That discovery felt like the beginning of my visual language.

More recently, Guide Kaiārahi has taken on a life far beyond what I imagined. It moves through spaces as if it were a living presence, meeting people in ways that continue to surprise me. Watching how it is received, how it brings light into different environments, has been extraordinary. It reminds me that a work’s life truly begins once it leaves the studio, and seeing how this one continues to grow and gather meaning has been a remarkable experience.

If you could hang your work in a gallery next to any other artist, who would it be?

I always return to the old masters when I imagine these kinds of pairings. If I could hang my work alongside any other artist, I think I would choose Piero della Francesca or Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. They may seem like very different painters, but both have shaped the way I understand light, structure and the emotional architecture of an image.

Piero della Francesca’s use of geometry and calm, expansive stillness feels almost cosmic to me, as though his paintings breathe in a measured and eternal rhythm. Caravaggio, on the other hand, wields light with such drama and conviction that it becomes a living force. His chiaroscuro is not just illumination, it is revelation.

Both artists understood light as something spiritual, directive and transformative. To place my work beside theirs would not be about comparison but about conversation, about how light travels across centuries, across materials, and across the bodies of work we leave behind.

If your art could be a dish at Attica, what would it be?

I think it would have to be something that reveals itself in layers, a dish that shifts as the light hits it and asks you to look twice, then look again. Maybe something that begins earthy and grounded, like the west coast sands I grew up with, and then suddenly lifts into something bright, unexpected and a bit mischievous. And of course, I would definitely be asking Ben and the team to pull out the edible glitter.

What is happening for you now?

There is a lot unfolding at the moment, and I feel very grateful for the momentum. Acid Bath House at Nina Johnson Gallery in Miami, curated by Jarrett Earnest, has just opened and runs until February 14, 2026. It is a beautifully wild and thoughtful show to be part of.

 I am also excited to have work included in Art of the Pacific: From the NGV Collection at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, which opened on November 15, 2025 and continues through October 26, 2026.

 Back home, I am preparing for a solo exhibition at Page Galleries in Wellington, opening March 12. There will also be new works incorporating Pacific black pearls with Ben Bergman Gallery at the Aotearoa Art Fair from April 30 to May 3, 2026. Alongside this, a display will be presented in the Research Library display case at the Auckland Art Gallery from 2 March to 5 July, titled Te Ara Mārama | The Path of Light, focusing on the archives and research materials of Guide Kaiārahi.