Regan Tamanui

Regan Tamanui is an artist based in Melbourne, Australia. In October 2000, he founded the Melbourne Stuckists, the fourth Stuckist of the original Stuckist groups and the first outside the United Kingdom. He has also painted prolifically as a street artist under the tag name HA-HA.

Career In October 2000, Regan Tamanui, a jazz, ska and skank fan, discovered the London Stuckist group whilst surfing the internet. He sent an email and then founded the Melbourne Stuckists. He saw "The main (point) that really stood out was the ability to wake up and paint pictures." This was the fourth Stuckist group to be started, and the first one outside the UK, thus launching an international movement that by 2006 counted 127 groups in 32 countries. On 27 October 2000 he staged the first Stuckist show outside the UK, when he mounted the Real Turner Prize Show at the Dead End Gallery in his home in Reno Road, Sandringham, concurrent with three shows of the same title (two in England and one in Germany) in protest against the Tate Gallery's Turner Prize.

Besides Tamanui, the other initial members of the Melbourne group were Justin Grub, Ben Blanchette, Malcome Mmackie and Dave Freeman Rose. A subsequent line-up was Basil Kouvelis, Justin Grubb, Ben Frost, Nigel Stein, Daniel Gorzadek, Stephen Sperling and Dennis Roper. Tamanui expressed his and the group's artistic philosophy: There are some people who shit in a tin. Is that really art?

Art Tamanui takes his lead from Picasso and American pop artist Shag. His work is "large, vibrantly colored, pop-art style paintings", often showing several figures interacting.

The participation of the Australian Stuckists in the London Vote Stuckist show in 2001 occasioned a double page spread in the leading Melbourne paper The Age. Melbourne curator, Juliana Engberg, said, "They are an aberrant version of conceptualism by default, using the same devices to promote something that's very conservative."

Stuckism

The Stuckists are a radical pro-painting group and are anti-conceptual art. The movement was started by Charles Thomson and Billy Childish (who has since left) in the United Kingdom in 1999 with eleven other artists and is now an international movement. They are noted for their "Agitprop" against the Turner Prize and Britart.