Category: Gallery Talk

‘Red Earth Reconnaissance’ – Emil McAvoy

Emil_McAvoy-RedEarthReconnaissance
Image: Emil McAvoy, Red Earth Reconnaissance, 2016

Red Earth Reconnaissance – Emil McAvoy
23 April – 4 June 2016
Saturday  23 April, 10:30am – 2pm: Opening and  combined Artist Talk – with Dawson Clutterbuck.

Papakura Art Gallery
10 Averill St, Papakura, Auckland
Hours: Mon to Fri, 9am – 5pm, Sat 10am – 2pm

‘Red Earth Reconnaissance’ is a botanical survey of the Papakura area beginning at the site of the Papakura Art Gallery and travelling outwards. ‘Red earth’ references the Maori name Papakura, and its soil rich in iron oxides. The botanical specimens come from and are connected to this fertile ground. The project aims to document and reframe fragments of the unique ecology of Papakura, toward a partial and poetic guide to this place and its peoples.

Related links:
http://emilmcavoy.com/peoplespark/  – a recent photographic project by McAvoy, exploring an environment similarly unfamiliar to him.

Red Earth Reconnaissance  & Doing Flowers Facebook event

Gallery Public Programme:
Wed 11 May, 10.30 – 12pm.  Flowers for the Home Workshop
Dawson Clutterbuck and Emil McAvoy will lead a workshop introducing the mechanics of floral arrangements. This workshop will be hands on and interactive. Please bring some flowers, greenery or containers to contribute on the day. Limited spaces available. Please contact the gallery to register. email: papakuraartgallery@aucklandcouncil.govt.nz or phone: (09) 297 7510

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City Gallery Wellington announces upcoming exhibition: ‘History in the Taking – 40 Years of PhotoForum’

 

John Miller: Police Arson Enquiries, Wellington, 1972
John Miller Police Arson Enquiries, Wellington 1972.


History in the Taking: 40 Years of PhotoForum
14 March – 14 June 2015

3 May 2015, 2pm
John B. Turner, co-founder of PhotoForum, speaks with Luit Bieringa about events leading up to the foundation of PhotoForum and the beginnings of PhotoForum Wellington, from 1965-1975. Followed by a signing of Turner’s latest book, Te Atatu Me: Photographs of an Urban New Zealand Village. Event info here.

28 March 2015, 2pm
Geoffrey H. Short, director of PhotoForum, is joined by Nina Seja, author of PhotoForum at 40: Counterculture, Clusters and Debate in New Zealand to discuss 40 years of art photography in New Zealand. Event info here.

City Gallery Wellington
Civic Square
101 Wakefield St
Wellington
www.citygallery.org.nz
Hours: open daily 10am – 5pm

In 2014, Auckland’s Gus Fisher Gallery presented the exhibition History in the Taking  to celebrate PhotoForum’s 40th anniversary. City Gallery is pleased to be showing the exhibition in Wellington.  Featuring around 150 photographs, the show  traces the development of art photography in New Zealand.  All the images featured in PhotoForum publications, and many have become iconic. Stars like Robin Morrison, Peter Peryer, Anne Noble, Laurence Aberhart, Fiona Clark and Peter Black feature alongside equally remarkable but now-neglected figures. The show also includes publications, posters and other memorabilia.

These days, in New Zealand, photography is accepted as an art form, but it wasn’t always the case. In 1973, John Turner and others founded PhotoForum to lead the charge. Over the years, this grass-roots organisation has promoted photography through exhibitions and publications, particularly its magazine. Within the photography community, PhotoForum was also the catalyst for debates within photography, about the virtues of different approaches and individuals.  A product of the 1970s, PhotoForum saw the medium as entangled with counterculture lifestyles and protest movements. The show offers not only a history of New Zealand photography but also a slice of New Zealand social history. It is accompanied by Nina Seja’s comprehensive history PhotoForum at 40: Counterculture, Clusters, and Debate in New Zealand.

History in the Taking has been toured by PhotoForum. Thanks also to the Gus Fisher Gallery, Auckland.

Sourced:
http://www.citygallery.org.nz/exhibitions/history-taking-40-years-photoforum

Related articles:
Interview with John B. Turner, PhotoForum Co-Founder
Interview with Photographer Lucien Rizos
Capture Wellington – PhotoForum Instagram competition
Behind the Scenes with Pauline Autet – Curatorial Assistant & Researcher, City Gallery Wellington

 

Mahara Gallery, Waikanae: ‘Young Country’ exhibition and publication

YCcover


‘Young Country’, Mahara Gallery, Waikanae, 1 November – 14 December 2014

An exhibition presenting a selection of images by 19th-century NZ photographer William Williams and poems by Kerry Hines – with albumen prints from Williams’s negatives, made for the exhibition by Wayne Barrar.

The exhibition accompanies the mid-Nov release of  ‘Young Country’, a book of poems by Kerry Hines with photographs by William Williams, published by Auckland University Press.

Events being held in association with the ‘Young Country’ exhibition at Mahara Gallery, include:

Wed 5 Nov, 11am: Floortalk, Kerry Hines – ‘Fresh Views of a Young Country: The Photographs of William Williams’

Sat 15 Nov, 4pm: Exhibition opening and book launch of  ‘Young Country’

Sun 16 Nov, 2pm: Poetry reading, Kerry Hines

Sun 30 Nov, 2pm: Floortalk, Wayne Barrar – on making the albumen prints for William Williams’s photographs in Young Country

Mahara Gallery
20 Mahara Place
Waikanae
Gallery hours: Tues to Sat 1oam – 4pm, Sun 1pm-4pm, Mon closed
Contact: ph (04) 902 6242 / email info@maharagallery.org.nz

 

Depot Artspace, Devonport: ‘Flora Photographic Aotearoa’ – Gallery talk

Please join us for the Flora Photographica Aotearoa: Gallery Talk this Saturday the 31st of May at 2pm. Featuring Ann Elias, Associate Professor, Sydney College of the Arts, in conversation with photographer Peter Peryer, formerly a long term Devonport resident. 

Flora Photographica Aotearoa Gallery Talk

 

Depot Artspace 28 Clarence St, Devonport, Auckland. Ph: 09 963 2331 www.depotartspace.co.nz
Opening hours: Mon: 12pm – 5pm Tue-Sat: 10am – 5pm Sun: 11am – 3pm
Public Holidays: 11am – 3pm

Gus Fisher Gallery, Auckland: Christine Webster

Christine Webster_ Therapies_Gus Fisher Gallery


Therapies: new photography by Christine Webster
9 May – 3 June 2014
Gallery One – Gus Fisher Gallery, Auckland
In conjunction with Milford Galleries, Dunedin and the Auckland Festival of Photography

Saturday 31 May, 1pm:  Visual culture expert Dr Sandy Callister is in conversation with photographer Christine Webster about her images of the crone in Therapies.

Christine Webster’s photography gets under the skin with its unsettling beauty and unnerving, direct gaze at subjects usually left in the dark. For over 35 years, her work has examined the way in which the female body has been constructed historically. In Therapies, she re-imagines the age of the crone, barren in body and pushed to the outskirts of a society that worships youth and beauty. In these recent photographs made in England, she has produced a sequence of images which evoke powerlessness, anguish and desolate beauty.

With tacit acknowledgement of the traditions of the English Romantic landscape, Webster sets her figures in a bleak world of bare trees, chill earth and oppressive skies. She writes: “Therapies places the subjects in, and alongside, a landscape which is not fecund and burgeoning with ampleness, but instead scarce, bleak and pared back to the essential dirt and mud”.

Christine Webster’s photographs, with their uneasy subject matter and lush production qualities, confront the viewer with their striking juxtapositions. Rich, textured interiors and stark, monochromatic exteriors mirror the tensions inherent in the minds and bodies of her subjects. The complex narratives in the 57 photographs which make up Therapies invite considered contemplation.

Gus Fisher Gallery
The Kenneth Myers Centre
74 Shortland St
Auckland, New Zealand
Telephone: +64 9 923 6646
http://www.facebook.com/gusfishergallery

Gallery Hours
Tuesday-Friday 10am-5pm
Saturday 12pm-4pm
Closed public holidays

 

Gus Fisher Gallery, Auckland: Mary Macpherson

Mary Macpherson  is to have selected Auckland images from the Bent series, at the Gus Fisher Gallery during the PhotoForum History in the Taking exhibition.

6-28 June 2014
Opening (Lower Foyer): Friday 6 June 2014, at 5.30pm
Sat 7 June 2pm: Mary will talk about Wellington PhotoForum history from a personal view and her work Bent.

MMM ak tree 2011
Image: Mary Macpherson, ‘Wattle Tree, Auckland’ (from the Bent series)

Mary Macpherson, Bent: Using New Zealand’s trees

Mary Macpherson started photographing trees in about 2011, while completing her Old New World series. Being a person who walks down the road and sees plants as others see houses or cars or people, it seemed to her to be an exciting idea to photograph trees. What lay beneath the surface of the idea?

Working with botanical ecologist Jonathan Kennett has made her aware of the commodity value of trees, and how cultural choices have determined what trees are grown in Aotearoa/New Zealand.

Gus Fisher Gallery
The Kenneth Myers Centre
74 Shortland St
Auckland, New Zealand
Telephone: +64 9 923 6646
http://www.facebook.com/gusfishergallery

Gallery Hours
Tuesday-Friday 10am-5pm
Saturday 12pm-4pm
Closed public holidays