I have been digging around the web looking for more contemporary Wellington-based photographers, other than those I mentioned in an earlier post here and here on this blog. In doing so I came across the work of Mark Marriott, Hans Weston, Tracey Kearns —art photographers who have both an online presence and who exhibit regularly. Wellington has a number of good active photographers and small artist-run spaces. The scene appears lively and the work interesting and diverse.
A good example is Mary Macpherson’s Old New World, a book of her photographs made over seven years about change in New Zealand society as seen in the small regional/rural towns throughout the country. The narrative is one of a shift from a traditional New Zealand, to places of prosperity and development that look very different to the 1960s and 70s. Presumably, the background reference is to the way that the neo-liberal mode of capitalism has systematically shaped New Zealand’s economy and society, so deeply affected aspects of everyday life as the process of commodification permeates all segments of society including art. A book is an appropriate form of expression for this kind of photographic work about our historical experiences about what is passing away.
In reworking of the photographic approaches of Walker Evans, Steven Shore and Joel Steinfield Old New World is against forgetting the past by proposing to remember the poetry of place in the landscapes and urbanscapes of the backroads of New Zealand. In doing so the text puts the past and recent works of New Zealand art photography into a different light, and opens them to different meanings inside and outside the art institution.
Macpherson, who is a
poet as well as a photographer,
says that this body of work is part of trying to understand her world and where she fits in it–ie., a trying to make sense of the changes. In that sense photography, as meaningful, sensuous, particular works of art is a form of thinking and self-discovery. What this suggests is that though artworks are indeed objects, the truth-content of art is of the world while also offering critical reflections upon it. This is a stance that is quite different from the contemporary adherents of the Romantic notion that art must establish itself as the antithesis of reason.
tree, Wellington CBD
Whilst reflecting on Macpherson’s Old New World work I became curious about the breadth and depth of the critical writing about photography and the visual arts in Wellington. I wondered if the situation in Wellington was the same as Adelaide. Both are provincial cities with the mainstream newspapers getting smaller, the resources devoted to journalism and editorship dropping, and the space for the visual art continuing to shrink. So where to for critical writing on photography?
Mark Amery, speaking in relation to Wellington, says that the closure of his fortnightly visual arts column with the Dominion Post newspaper in 2014 leaves Wellington without any visual arts commentary. The story is a familiar one: the mainstream media are increasingly treating the visual arts as irrelevant. The consequence is that Wellington’s visual artists are left with the critical writing about their work having a marginal existence in niche online publications, just like Adelaide with the Adelaide Review. Emery, who runs public art programme Letting Space, mentions the Pantograph Punch, The Lumière Reader, Eyecontact and The Big Idea in relation to New Zealand. Continue Reading…
