Paulus McKinnon

Born in Devonport, Auckland in 1967, Paulus McKinnon has been exhibiting his art widely throughout New Zealand for the past twenty one years and is represented in significant private collections both locally and abroad.

Having lived, worked and studied in Auckland for a large part of his life, in 1999 he co-founded Indicator Studios, a highly successful multi-disciplinary artist co-operative in Mt. Eden, holding large open studio exhibitions annually. Paulus has been living in Gisborne since 2008 having established new studios in large existing sheds with his wife (designer, Katy Wallace) on their converted half-acre ex mushroom farm.

McKinnon has spent a great deal of his spare time traveling New Zealand, in particular its coastline.
His recent work is in part a response to his new home on the East Coast, Tairawhiti.

His work explores past and present relationships, both human and environmental, encompassing notions of discovery, loss and preservation. Utilising the metaphoric and allusive potential of prosaic materials: enamel paint, linoleum, found object, salvaged timbers, weatherboards, fencing battens, road signage, and sign writing vinyls, much of his work employs a process of construction; the cutting up of materials and the careful formal recomposition of these materials to form new allegories.

An artisan, builder and a signwriter by trade, McKinnon graduated with a bachelor of design (majoring in painting) from Unitec Institute of Technology in Auckland in 1998. The marrying of the academic with his various trade skills gives McKinnon’s work a quality and tactility that is unique to him.