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.
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.
For the first time, the Photo Media Department of Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design has placed emphasis on the photo book format within their curriculum. Year 3 Photo Media students will present their own photo books at the inaugural end-of-year book event launching on 13th November 2015 and running over two days.
The work will also be on display on Saturday 14 November, accompanied by a talk from Anita Tótha (Founder of Photobook Club Auckland and Remote Photobooks) and includes a screening of the short film documentary ‘Pictures on Paper: Photobooks in New Zealand’ (produced by Tangent Photography Collective).
The film profiles both established and emerging artists and photobook makers such as Ann Shelton, David Cook, Solomon Mortimer, and Shelley Jacobson and delivers a lively insight into the current photo book phenomenon.
The Year 3 photobook launch is on Friday 13 November from 5.30pm – 7.30pm.
The talk and screening takes place Saturday 14 November from 11am – 2pm. 11:15am Artists’ Talk with Anita Totha, Founder of Remote Photobooks and Photobook Club Auckland 11:45am Screening of ‘Pictures on Paper-Photobooks in New Zealand’ documentary film produced by Tangent Photography Collective (30 minutes)
All events will be held at the Whitecliffe campus located at 24 Balfour Road, Parnell, Level 5 – Lecture Hall.
‘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
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.
This is the first exhibition to be shown at the Anna Miles Gallery new space at 10/30 Upper Queen St. Featured works include photography by Allan McDonald, Bob and June Raw, Lucien Rizos, Gilbert Melrose, Darren Glass, Solomon Mortimer plus Johanna Pegler’s painting based on a C19th sepia photograph.
ANNA MILES GALLERY
10/30 Upper Queen Street, Auckland 1010, New Zealand
Open Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays 11-3 & by appointment www.annamilesgallery.com
John B. Turner’s Photography Blog, dated 16 December 2014:
The New Zealand contribution to the 2014 Pingyao International Photography Festival included three exhibitions, six floor talks, a three-hour seminar, several television interviews, posing with Chinese strangers, and making new friends from all over the world. The vocabulary of PIP volunteer translators, who were mostly students of the dynamic Amy Liu of Taiyuan Technical University, was seriously tested with our odd Kiwi accents and vernacular speech. Julia Durkin, Director of the Auckland Festival of Photography, somehow found time from intense networking to join the portfolio review team, while I, as a guest curator, was free to network after helping “my” photographers, Craig Potton (Nelson), Ian Macdonald, (Auckland), and the environmental sculpture couple, Martin Hill and Philippa Jones (Wanaka), whom I had not met before, to settle in. They were joined by Jenny Tomlin, from Auckland, who had a solo exhibition. To cap the NZ presence, Martin Hill won an ‘Excellent Photographer Award’ and 4,000 people were given a free copy of the 32-page A6 bilingual catalogue of To Save a Forest… Photographs by leading New Zealand conservationists: Martin Hill, Ian Macdonald and Craig Potton.
Philippa Jones: Ian Macdonald, Craig Potton and Martin Hill, Pingyao, 2014John B. Turner: Student volunteers hanging Ian Macdonald’s prints for ‘To Save a Forest…. exhibition
As usual, there were pluses and minuses to the PIP Festival, with the positives dominating, and apart from the extraordinary array of photographs on display, it was the genuine warmth of their welcome, and the generous help from the volunteers that made a huge impression. Ian Macdonald summed up the exhibitions when after his initial foray he returned to exclaim that he had seen more outstanding photographs in two hours at PIP than he had seen during his recent exploration of London’s photography scene over a four week period. Ian and Elise Macdonald are legendary hosts, and Ian did as much as any official tourist bureau could to entice their new Chinese friends to get to enjoy a New Zealand visit and visit them at home in Matakana.’
Compared to her first PIP exhibition, featuring four Aucklanders, Chris Corson-Scott, Geoffrey Heath, Anita Jacobsen, and Vicky Thomas, last year, Elaine Smith’s 2014 selection was undermined by including the work of Qiane Matata-Sipu, who despite showing some promise, has simply not yet reached the level of technical competence or confidence shown by the other exhibitors: Tano Gago, Solomon Mortimer, and Tim Veling. To make matters worse, the exemplary work of Gago and Veling was displayed on the heavily shaded walls, while Matata-Sipu’s (and Mortimer’s) weaker prints received the limelight. Allocated what should have been a good space in the revamped Diesel Factory B7, the Auckland Festival was stuck between a rock and a hard place because of inadequate lighting for the best (and largest) works in their show. What’s the point of showing fine images under pathetically uneven lighting conditions? So I have to ask of the people responsible, Why wasn’t the same care taken downstairs, as that taken for the proper and more versatile lighting on the floor above where PIP’s permanent collection was newly installed? It shouldn’t be a big deal to provide reasonably even lighting on both sides of all display panels? It was galling to see, just around the corner, empty display spaces with beautiful natural light begging to be filled, and another filled with a display of backpacks for sale. (Julia Durkin informs me that restrictions on the use of nails or screws forced them to change Elaine’s planned layout for all of the work. “The lighting correction was requested,” Julia said, but like curator Alasdair Foster with his exhibition, she had no luck in getting the lighting fixed.)
Auckland Festival of Photography’s exhibition ‘People’ at PIP
I was also tormented by the fact that no extra lighting would be provided to brighten the shaded side of the panels for our ‘To Save a Forest…’ show. The effect was to compromise viewing of most of Craig Potton’s work until late afternoon when the small floodlights unevenly illuminated his glowing prints and shaded Ian’s and Martin’s.
Martin Hill’s work, ‘To Save a Forest….’, PIP
That PIP suffers from serious underfunding is pretty obvious. The Shanxi government’s decision to make PIP more of a fair, with a new avenue of overhead lanterns lined with numerous small stalls offering tourist trinkets, demonstrates an inability to understand the uniqueness and the real needs of such a festival, with so much potential for increasing the number of informed foreign and Chinese visitors with a particular interest in photography. Equally, the razzle dazzle of the Awards event, designed exactly like a commercial television presentation, is another lost opportunity to seriously celebrate photographers and photography. Not least because when something went seriously wrong with the electronics this year, the small intended slide show of work on exhibition was not seen.
Coming back to the issue of display lighting, it was, ironically, very noticeable in B7, how beautifully lit the delightful and impressive cellphone exhibition, ‘My Bed & One Day in China’ was. Subtitled ‘The First China’s Top Ten Mobile Phone Photographers’ a kpkpw show curated by Fu Yongjun. When I asked why their lighting was superior the answer was that exhibitors could reposition the lights for their work. However that might be, the lighting system elsewhere, high in the ceiling, did not look that sufficient or flexible.
In last year’s PIP blog I had expressed my hope that the Auckland Festival and any other contributions would present significant work from south of the Bombay hills, to better represent photography in New Zealand, so it was good to see Veling, Hill and Potton included in this year’s offerings. A three-hour seminar by Hill, Potton, and Macdonald was attended by over 70 people, mainly in the younger age group, with several expressing their hope of visiting and studying in New Zealand.
Jenny Tomlin’s pinhole exhibition ‘Life Beyond the Lens’, PIP 2014
It is interesting, but by no means comforting, to see that some of the finest work featured at PIP is often displayed in the labyrinth of makeshift and often leaking spaces that PIP is renowned for. Thus Jenny Tomlin found her pinhole work displayed opposite that of Ed Kashi, the VII agency photographer, in equally dismal lighting in Diesel Factory A5, where my ‘Tint’ exhibition was held in 2013. For Jenny, who is an expert analogue printer, the main consolation and trade off was likely the huge number of people who “saw” her work and took an interest in her mysterious low tech images. “Glimpsed,” however, would be a more accurate description of the interaction from the great majority of onlookers who have not learned the rewards of paying adequate attention to pictures and their meaning. Some smart ones used the light from their cell phones to take a closer look in the shadows. Kashi, billed as a star attraction, and a PIP award winner, didn’t visit Pingyao to see where his three essays were displayed, but his work can best be seen in publications and on the web. Jenny’s best prints, with their nuances of tone, detail and colour need to be seen in decent lighting.
Great South Road stretches from central Newmarket to the red soil of the Bombay hills and beyond. Once, this arterial route was the main trunk line out of the city. The road weaves through volcanic cones and inlets, industrial parks, neighbourhoods and Rainbows End.
Moving away from the centre means taking a position on the fringe.
This territory offers complexities and challenges. Photography does not offer truisms or objective realities here; rather a series of fragments, second glances, double takes.
Photographers have been invited by Tangent collective to respond to this territory in ways that reflect their own varied practices.
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