For over thirty years Shane Cotton (Ngapuhi, Ngati Rangi, Ngati Hine, Te Uri Taniwha) has developed a rigorous and evolving painting practice, using the medium to layer the visual languages through which Aotearoa can be seen and understood. In this book leading art writer Anthony Byrt takes us on a voyage into Te Tai Tokerau to unravel the relationships, landscapes and histories that are the wellspring of Cotton’s art – the world of Kororareka and Hongi Hika, of mission stations, revolutionary religious ideas and Te Tiriti. By travelling deep into Cotton’s visual universe, Byrt helps us make sense of the paintings and the world-changing collisions that occurred in the nineteenth-century North – collisions that still shape Aotearoa today. Working through the remarkable range of Shane Cotton’s work, this is a vital, expansive and necessary account of one of the country’s most important living artists.