Riduan Tomkins
North Gallery, 13th January–6th February 2010
Riduan Tomkins (1941 - 2009) is a painter of international acclaim whose work has been exhibited throughout the world from London to Toronto. In 1984, his paintings were included in 'An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture' at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In New Zealand however, his oeuvre is often overlooked, despite the fact that he has been one of the most influential artists to come to this country in the past twenty-five years.
British born, and educated at the Royal College of Art in London, Tomkins chose to settle and teach in New Zealand between 1986 and 1997. And it was here, as Senior Lecturer in Painting at the University of Canterbury, that he became an important formative influence on a new generation of New Zealand painters.
Upon his arrival in 1986, Tomkins held 5 solo exhibitions in public galleries, dealer galleries and a specialist print studio. In 1988, Head of the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts, Ted Bracey, commented on the immediacy of this public reception of Tomkins work at that time and drew attention to its capacity to enliven New Zealand art: 'It is rarely the case that we have been so suddenly confronted - in our own artistic backyard - with the work of an artist of international standing and even more unusual for us to be presented with something approaching the sum of that work virtually all at once and out of the blue.'1
Bracey maintained that there was 'much more to it than meets an eye constrained by a purely modernist construction,'2 and drew attention to the need to consider Tomkins practice and the 'context of the artist's own history of production.'3 Critical to Tomkins's art was the premise that content and form cannot be separated and studied alone. While in discussion with curator John Hurrell in 1994, Tomkins maintained that the 'work is not about the illustration of an idea. The image and the form are the same thing. When painting I develop them in unison. The compositional development does not have figures imposed on it - the figures are the forms which determine the composition and space. The two are so integrated formally and conceptually that they cannot be prised apart.'5
As a painter, versed in the aesthetics of Matisse and European modernism, Tomkins' treatment of space is both one of pure formalist abstraction, in which colour and light seem to float just off the surface of the canvas, and one of the construction of an infinite space in which a vision of the limitless possibilities of humanity and being are implicit in the figures that inhabit a universe that frequently denies gravity, time and place.
While tutoring at the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts, Tomkins influenced a new generation of painter, amongst this group were Seraphine Pick and Shane Cotton. In particular, Pick's early work, like Tomkins's, encompassed evocative scapes in which ethereal and transient forms and figures were often ungrounded, and entwined within a picture plane in which they appear to be eternally fading, reappearing and transforming.
An ardent traveller, Tomkins left New Zealand in 1996 but continued to paint and teach in England, Canada and finally Indonesia. In recent years he was instrumental in establishing the Central Kalimantan Cultural Collective. A generous and optimistic individual, Tomkins recognised the needs of local artists and artisans, and developed a proposal to open an arts department at the Kalimantan University and utilise the museum as a cultural centre.
Tomkins' most recent works included a series that he had titled; 'Restorative Dragons.' The artist's choice of phrase is telling. East Asian cultures believe that the dragon brings good fortune. Accompanied by additional works that featured a series of luminescent canvases with dragons, clouds, and ice-skaters, Tomkins's final works were characterised by forms and figures, not only entirely rational and witty in their construction and formal resolution, but also joyfully liberated, within the four corners of the picture plane that they inhabited.
Riduan Tomkins' work is included in public and private collections throughout Europe, North America, South America, South East Asia and New Zealand.
1. Ted Bracey, Riduan Tomkins, Art New Zealand, vol.47, Winter 1988, p.82
2. ibid., p.83
3. ibid., p.84
4. John Hurrell, Stimulus Style, C.S.A Gallery, Christchurch, 1994, p.57
5. ibid. Helen Taylor, 2009