Steaphan Paton

Steaphan Paton (born 1985) is a Melbourne-based artist and member of the Gunai and Monero Nations. He works in the mediums of painting, sculpture, installation and video. I first came across his work at the Sovereignty exhibition at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in 2016-17, and I recall his installation of three cloaks often.

The cloaks are made of many paper documents pieced and sewn together – infringements, fines and letters of demand sent to the artist by different authorities, including sheriffs, magistrates and officers. By referencing the long-standing tradition of cloak-making, decorated with geometric designs from his Gunai and Monero heritage, Paton displays symbols of Indigenous identity in immediate confrontation with the exercise of disciplinary control by the government.

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His work makes a powerful comment on the way Indigenous lives are bound by assertions of Commonwealth authority; confined by overwhelming piles of legal documents seeking to control and punish. His expression of culture and Indigenous sovereignty is both formed and curtailed by Western hegemony.

Check out more of Steaphan Paton’s work here.