Areez Katki came to national attention for his hand knit sweaters, when both he and the century were in their teens. But don’t be tempted to use the word fashion around him.
“I found fashion, and I still kind of find fashion, a bit scary, a little bit icky,” he says, “because of the way it doesn’t foster positive identities. Until very recently fashion was extremely size-ist, capitalistic and Euro-centric. I felt very uncomfortable around that.”
While he studied, Areez had a part-time job at Miss Crabb. “Kristine (Crabb) always championed inclusivity, so I felt like I was in good hands,” he says. The now-closed Ponsonby Road boutique was like a temple to individuality, as is Kristine’s current project, Gloria.
Using knitting skills learned from his Grandma, Areez made himself some knitwear, then “just did a fun photo shoot, with a couple of friends” and it grew from there.
In 2013 Areez showed his collection Perennial as an installation, something akin to the art world, at the Miss Crabb store. His painterly way with colour didn’t go unnoticed.
Areez, on reflection, concurred, “I am painting, but my methodology was - is still - very much to do with colour and painting, except that I use thread.”
When a long term relationship ended, Areez moved to Spain, and travelling around, he rediscovered what he loved about contemporary art.
He returned to Aotearoa in 2016 and “reframed my creative practice as being more aligned with contemporary art”. He’s since left and come back many times, exhibited internationally and has representation in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington and Mumbai.
As for knitting? “I don’t do it anymore,” he says when we meet at Tylee Cottage in Whanganui, where he was artist-in-residence at the time. He points out a traditional Aran knit draped over the bottom post of the stair rail. “I still have a couple. I just leave them around the house, they’re my cosy jumpers that I wear around the house.”
For all Areez’s qualms about the fashion industry, he observes how it intersects with his art. Waste, for example, is a mutual concern. “When I paint I work with a lot of found paper; when I embroider I work with found cloth. It’s this relationship with material that has been rescued from obsolescence”.
Soft materials remain central to his artistic practice – Areez is known for his embroidered works, often on khadi (traditional Indian hand-made textile) sourced from his ancestral home in Mumbai. But his Whanganui studio contains works on paper and unfired objects and figures, “little experiments” in clay, dug only metres from the front door of Tylee Cottage.
“I really wanted to continue working with earth and clay. But to kind of reframe and question the ways in which earth and clay have been used, both in archaeology, but also in contemporary sculpture.
“As a material which is whenua, which is very sacred, and probably the most fought over substance in the world – land – as one that should never be owned or commercialised. So I’m figuring out ways in which to incorporate my own migrant history, with earth and having a conversation with the environment.”
Some ribs are always soft, a new body of work by Areez Katki will be exhibited at McLeavey Gallery until August 5.
