‘Selective Exposure’ exhibition on show at In Situ Photo Project, Christchurch

 

Selective Exposure is a group exhibition, organised by Haruhiko Sameshima, featuring a new generation of contemporary photographers based in New Zealand, Germany and Japan. It features samples of prints from each photographer’s sustained projects. Originally exhibited at Photospace gallery in Wellington in November 2015, the opening at In Situ Photo Project will be the exhibition’s first showing in the South Island.

Including work by Caryline Boreham, Conor Clarke, Peter Evans, Shelley Jacobson, Julius Margan, Asumi Mizuo, Solomon Mortimer, Stephen Roucher, Shigeru Takato and Tim J. Veling, these photographers use analogue film technology to reflect aspects of reality filtered through their own experiences, mediated by the old world photographic process.

The artists in this exhibition have all graduated from New Zealand art schools majoring in photography, within the last 25 years. They then went off to explore such diverse subject matters as steaming towers in the industrial hub of Germany, television news studios from 40 countries and 70 cities, contemporary views of the city rebuilt after destruction by an atomic bomb, and petroleum industry related sites across New Zealand from the perspective of  ‘peak oil’. Others travelled to scout for alternative identities in the country’s heartlands, the shifting border between urban and rural in a home suburb or, even closer to home, looking deeply into family and kinship under duress.

The anachronism of using film cameras detaches the images from today’s immediate use-value in that it is, for example, unable to be uploaded instantly to Instagram but it does slow down the process, giving time to contemplate the consequences of image making. The resulting printed photograph will carry that residue of the legacy of veracity, which transcribes the ‘look’ of the world. Accumulation of their selected exposures feeds the artists’ narratives.

This exhibition is a survey of tertiary trained art photographers’ views of where we stand in the global world, staring intently into their individualised evidences of reality. Works here reflect notions of art as social and personal inquiry – seeking to better understand humanity from their chosen environments, and is a record of their experiences within.

Opening night:
6pm, Friday 8th July at the BNZ Centre, 120 Hereford Street, next to Scorpio Bookstore.

Show runs until 5th August

Gallery hours:
Open daily, 10am – 5pm

Selective Exposure at In Situ catalogue [pdf]

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Related events:
– 11 July 2016: In Conversation – Haruhiko Sameshima, Mark Adams, Tim J. Veling, Hannah Wilson. Following the discussion there will be a  film screening of ‘Pictures on Paper – Photobooks in New Zealand’ produced by Tangent NZ Photography Collective.
Full details at https://www.facebook.com/events/580140728813539/

To join the In Situ Photo Project mailing list and keep up-to-date with current events, please visit ispp.nz or their facebook page.

 

 

 

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Open Book – Photobook Exhibition

 

 

Open Book – Photobook Exhibition

‘Open Book’ – exhibition coordinated by Shelley Jacobson

RM Gallery, 307 K’Road (first floor), Newton, Auckland
5 – 21 November
Opening Wednesday 4 November

Physics Room (library), Christchurch 5 December – 30 January
Opening Friday 4 December

Harvey Benge
David Cook
Shelley Jacobson
Andrew Kennedy
Solomon Mortimer
Mark Purdom
Haruhiko Sameshima
Ann Shelton
Fiona Short
Anita Totha
Tim J Veling
Shaun Waugh

‘Open Book’ consists of twelve new photobook works, created specifically for exhibition. Its premise is to provoke artists’ experimentation with the book form and to position the book as a gallery experience. Each artist has been given autonomy to pursue and realise a project of their individual interest, as relevant to their current practice. The collective result of these endeavours is a compact exhibition: each artist’s work is folded in on itself or cut and stacked, the content largely hidden from view. To experience it, you are invited to open a book.

Exhibition coordinator: Shelley Jacobson
Display furniture: Andrew Kennedy

 

Photospace Gallery: ‘Selective Exposure’ group exhibition

Selective Exposure
16 Oct – 7 Nov 2015
Opening Thurs 15 Oct 2015, 5pm
Photospace Gallery

Reflecting back on the last quarter century, so much has seemingly changed, happened. Technologies emerged that fundamentally altered the way we do things, the methods by which we gather and disseminate information, and how we communicate. This last quarter century is also notable for the technological restructuring of photography by digital processes that now dominate the industry (Photoshop 1.0 was launched 19 February 1990). Less perceptible, but perhaps more important, are shifts in values attached to things and ideas, like the value of art, education, institutions, their ideologies.

This exhibition samples images from recent projects by photographers who have graduated over the past 25 years from New Zealand tertiary art education, and who majored in the specialist medium of photography. All photographs were made with analogue film technology and loosely fall into the field of extended ‘documentary’, with subjects carefully sought from specific environments of the photographers’ choosing.

The selection is not an attempt to suggest a collective attitude, or a stylistic manifesto. Nor is this an attempt to weave a larger narrative using the threads of individual pursuits. It was based on a question why such a seeming anachronism as film photography is still consistently used by a diverse range of graduates from different New Zealand art schools and over such a long period.

– Haruhiko Sameshima, October 2015

‘Selective Exposure’ includes photographs by Caryline Boreham, Conor Clarke, Peter Evans, Shelley Jacobson, Julius Margan, Asumi Mizuo, Solomon Mortimer, Stephen Roucher, Shigero Takato, Tim J Veling. The exhibition is supported by a grant from Creative New Zealand, and Rim Books is a sponsor.

Links to New Zealand photography publications

Listed below are details and links to New Zealand photography publications previously listed on the PhotoForum homepage:

Pictures They Want to Make – Recent Auckland Photography by Chris Corson-Scott and Edward Hanfling
Wellington Streets by Julian Ward
Bent by Mary Macpherson
some things you should have told me by Harvey Benge
Our Future Nga Tau ki Muri by Ans Westra
Steamer by Alan Knowles
Aceh Revives + Scars: Life after the Tsunami by Noel Trustrum
the grass is awfully green – Limited edition book by Peter Black
Catch My Eye by Gabrielle McKone
Thinking it through by Tony Watkins, photographs by Haruhiko Sameshima
Old New World by Mary Macpherson

Haruhiko Sameshima’s ‘Bold Centuries’ celebrated as a NZ Classic book

 

Shortlisted along with books by Allen Curnow, Dennis McEldowney, Margaret Mahy (with Jill McDonald), and Gordon H Brown, Gregory O’Brien give the thumbs up to Haru Sameshima’s Bold Centuries in his list of five New Zealand classic books worthy of more attention.

‘Bold Centuries (2009) by photographer Haruhiko Sameshima, O’Brien wrote on ‘Unbound’, the New Zealand Book Council’s web page, ‘ is a thought-provoking, fascinating, exemplary publication. Fizzing with visual and intellectual energy, the book asks all sorts of questions while offering all sorts of pleasures to the committed viewer/reader. It is a notable highpoint in Sameshima’s audacious, uncompromising project as both a photographer and the publisher of Rim Books.’
http://booknotes-unbound.org.nz/great-kiwi-authors-share-great-kiwi-classics/

Bold Centuries: A Photographic History Album, was published by the photographer himself, with assistance from Creative New Zealand and also PhotoForum.

As Andy Palmer wrote, ‘Bold Centuries is not merely an artist survey book, nor just a collection of loosely related images; it is a curated exhibition placing the artist in context with his forebears and his contemporaries.’

This remarkable book, packed with a huge variety of images relating to ecotourism, the subject of Sameshima’s university study, also included essays by Kyra Macfarlane, Ingrid Horrocks, John Wilson, Tim Corbalis, Aaron Lister, Damian Skinner, Fiona Amundsen and Claudia Bell.

A pdf showing a few pages from the 196 page book can be seen here.

Copies are still available from Rim Books, www.rimbooks.com at $60 plus post and packaging in NZ.

 

The Engine Room, Wellington: ‘A nostgalia for modernity’ – Haruhiko Sameshima

UPDATE: The Engine Room is presenting a critical response of Haruhiko Sameshima’s exhibition ‘A nostalgia for modernity’ by photographer and academic staff member of Whiti o Rehua School of Art, David Cook.

Monday 31st March 12.15 – 12.45 pm  All welcome.

The Engine Room
East End Block 1
Massey University,
Wellington Campus
63 Wallace Street, Entrance C
Tasman Street, Entrance E

theengineroom.org.nz

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The Engine Room is pleased to invite you to two events in one evening:

Exhibition – A nostalgia for modernity
Haruhiko Sameshima

Opens Friday 21 March 5.30pm.
Exhibition dates 24 March – 4 April 2014
Gallery hours Mon to Fri (12 – 4pm)

Haruhiko Sameshima, a full time artist and freelance photographer based in Auckland, has exhibited widely in solo and group shows throughout New Zealand since 1982. His photographic practice focuses on the idea of tourism and tourist sites as expressions of identity where the packaging of environment – such as architecture, museum displays, man-made landscapes and advertising billboards – are a principal focus.

Book launch – An Urban Quest for Chlorophyll
Edited by Jenny Gillam & Dieneke Jansen
Published by Rim Books

Edited by Jenny Gillam & Dieneke Jansen, the book includes projects by Tanya Eccleston and Monique Redmond working as the Suburban Floral Association, Amanda Yates, Gillam & Jansen, as well as texts by Lara Strongman, Kate Linzey, Andrew Douglas and Sue Gallagher. With foreword by Mark Amery.
The publication will be for sale at the discounted cash price of $20.

The Engine Room
A Massey University,
Whiti o Rehua School of Art
Litmus Initiative

East End Block 1
Massey University Wellington,
63 Wallace Street, Entrance C

FLORA PHOTOGRAPHICA AOTEAROA

Greta Anderson Day for night, Ngahue Cresent (Hydrangea), 2013

FLORA PHOTOGRAPHICA AOTEAROA

Laurence Aberhart Greta Anderson Wayne Barrar Janet Bayly Andrew Beck Gary Blackman Rhondda Bosworth Joyce Campbell Ben Cauchi Max Coolahan [1918-1985] Lisa Crowley Derek Henderson Frank Hofmann [1916-1989] John Johns [1924-1999] Ian Macdonald Anne Noble Richard Orjis Fiona Pardington Peter Peryer Haruhiko Sameshima C. Brian Smith

An exhibition from McNamara Gallery Photography

February 12 – March 21
10 am – 3 pm Wednesday – Friday
Hosted by Maggie Barry ONZM, MP for North Shore
Bowen House Exhibition Space at Parliament, 70/84 Lambton Quay, Wellington

Art focus tours at Parliament are scheduled during the Festival of the Arts in Wellington
at 1.30pm on 24/25/26/27 February. Bookings are required. The tours will visit the Flora Photographica Aotearoa exhibition and other areas in the Parliamentary precinct to view art from the Parliamentary Collection. For more information email Art@parliament.govt.nz

May 24 – June 12
Depot Artspace, Devonport, Auckland
Guest speaker: Saturday 31st May at 2pm, Ann Elias, Associate Professor, Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney

June 20 – July – August 29
McNamara Gallery Photography, Wanganui

‘Flowers, in art, are usually less innocent and more complicated than might be imagined…’ [1]
They ‘…are privileged objects of the imagination not because they are the most beautiful but because they are the most imaginable.’ [2]. From its beginning photography has engaged with science and developed a special relationship with flower motifs. Images of the great variety of different plant and flower species serve as a ‘substitute’ for the traditional herbarium.

Photographers’ frame our indigenous and exotic botanical world, depicting isolated specimens or plant groupings, both arranged and in the natural environment. Repeating themes are formalism, repetition, lyricism, symbolism and metaphor; including subjects anthropomorphized through photography, and traditional notions associated with the flower as a marker for the transience, ambivalence and beauty of human existence. Expanding this aspect ‘…the uncompromised beauty of the flowers, which never perishes, their concept and identity as objects of beauty remain intact, eternal, despite their imminent fate.’ [3].

In this changing world, our physical co-dependence on plants, and their environment, is becoming increasingly evident; emphasizing the connectedness of all things.

[1] Elaine Scarry, ‘Imagining Flowers: Perceptual mimesis (particularly delphinium)’, Representations, No.57,
Winter 1997, p 94

[2] Andrew Graham-Dixon, The Independent, 1992

[3] Jiang Zhi, ‘Love Letters’ photography-now.com 31.5,12

McNAMARA GALLERY Photography Ltd
190 Wicksteed St. WHANGANUI 4500
NEW ZEALAND

Tuesday / Wednesday – Saturday 11 – 3 [often open to 6] or by appointment
* Please check website INFORMATION page for occasional closed days due to travel commitments
06 348 7320 / 027 249 8059 mcnamaraphotogal@xtra.co.nz
www.mcnamara.co.nz

EyeContact: Peter Ireland review of ‘Pictures They Want to Make’

EyeContact is a forum built to encourage art reviews and critical discussion about the visual culture of Aotearoa New Zealand. Below are two excerpts from Peter Ireland’s review of the publication Pictures They Want to Make: Recent Auckland Photography.

‘There is no doubt that PTWTM has superb production values. But then, so did the Nuremberg rallies. We’re back to the old Scholastic distinction between appearance and substance, but if anyone’s talking about any kind of excellence, it’s still a distinction with currency. Getting a stamp on your hand for achievement might work in Year One, but post-Year Thirteen in a culture with any depth it seems reasonable to expect a little more than just taking part.’

‘Apart from offering the various photographers a platform it’s hard to know what PTWTM is about. As the authors admit, the “Auckland” net is more holes than string, and why should some sort of regionalist focus matter anyway, taking heed of Jackson Pollock’s remarking on the absurdity of an “American mathematics”. Of course, there’s probably more photography produced in the Auckland region, but if we’re talking sheer volume it might be more to the point discussing hydro-electricity along the Waikato River. And, oddly, PTWTM‘s content isn’t about variety either – the more modest Open the Shutter: Auckland Photographers Now demonstrated a much more diverse range of practice, which in the two decades since has expanded rather than contracting. Upon repeated examination it becomes clearer that what this book is about is the persistence of an amateur outlook formed – however inescapably – in the 1970s, but which has very little reason to exist in the second decade of the 21st century.’ Read the full review HERE.

Peter Ireland – 8 November 2013
EyeContact http://eyecontactsite.com

Note: Further reviews and information relating to this publication can be found here.

Art New Zealand review: ‘Pictures They Want to Make – Recent Auckland Photography’

Included in the current issue (No. 147/Spring 2013) of Art New Zealand magazine, is David Eggleton’s extensive (two and half page) book review of  Pictures They Want to Make: Recent Auckland Photography.

Below are two extracts from his review:

“The book itself, containing the work of 12 photographers and more than 100 photographs mostly drawn from longer photo-essays, is an energetic, imaginative production, a splashy publication on an Auckland scale without being unwieldy.”

“In their Introduction, the editors suggest that their selected artists have ‘varying degrees of commitment to notions of “the real”. Ian Macdonald is one who flouts attempts to nail down the real, preferring artifice. He collages digital photographs to create rainforest facades. Here, the New Zealand landscape is presented as an ecological niche, pristine and primal, and through the lush foliage the primeval light beckons. He makes images that are green altars, monumental and hopeful.

Geoffrey H. Short is the anarchist of the bunch, a singular poet, exploding expectations with exhilarating photographs of controlled explosions at Bethells Beach Te Henga. These spectacular bomb-bursts, as the essay on him tells us, are a metaphor for the act of photography itself.”

Review by David Eggleton
Art New Zealand
147/Spring 2013 issue
(pgs 93-95)

Note: Pictures They Want to Make: Recent Auckland Photography is co-authored by Chris Corson-Scott and Edward Hanfling, with foreword by Ron Brownson. Further reviews and information relating to this PhotoForum Inc. publication can be found here.

EyeContact Review by Zara Sigglekow: ‘Recent Auckland Photography’

EyeContact is a forum built to encourage art reviews and critical discussion about the visual culture of Aotearoa New Zealand. Zara Sigglekow has just compiled this review of Recent Auckland Photography exhibition (20 May – 12 June 2013), which is now posted on their website.  Below is an extract from her article.

Photography at North Art

Derek Henderson, Kevin Simmons, Leanne Hema and Troy Burton, Reid’s Farm, 2007.

‘Recent Auckland Photography at North Art gallery was part of the Auckland Festival of Photography. Set over two gallery spaces this large exhibition is accompanied with an extensive publication, which includes an introduction by the curators Chris Corson-Scott and Edward Hanfling, foreword by senior Auckland Art Gallery curator Ron Brownson, and brief essays on each photographer. Within the expanse of approaches represented in the festival the curators choose to focus on a particular style of photography. While somewhat narrow, this is necessary in order to create a survey of coherence and depth and prevent a mish-mash of styles and approaches.

The photographs chosen are what could be labelled ‘straight’ photography. There is no push to abstraction, overt manipulation or over conceptualisation. Yet – as stressed in the accompanying book’s introduction – they are not ‘snapshots’ or ‘documents’ taken with an impartial and objective eye. The photographers ‘make’ the pictures selecting with scene with intentionality, framing the image and sometimes staging its contents. All twelve photographers take photographs that are ‘scapes’ of the world around them: cityscapes; suburbanscapes; landscapes, and the details that lie within them. Some engage with identity and history while others scrutinise the present. The restriction of ‘Auckland’ is taken loosely: either photographs taken of Auckland or by Auckland photographers in international or Auckland regional locations.’  Read the full review HERE

Zara Sigglekow – 7 August 2013
EyeContact http://eyecontactsite.com

Note: Further reviews and information relating to this publication can be found here.