Auckland Fringe: Dark side of the ‘missing’ Moons

Missing is at the Beautiful Things gallery as part of the Auckland Fringe Festival 2022.

The Auckland Fringe Festival — Ahurei Mōwaho o Tāmaki Makaurau 2022 kicked off this week.

Across three weeks, the open-access independent festival for the performing arts will take place at venues across the city and showcase the quirkier side of the Auckland arts scene as well as host performers from around the world.

Theatre, poetry, music, comedy, circus, variety, dance, art exhibitions and everything in between and beyond will feature this year, in a festival that embraces the spirit of inclusivity and diversity.

Opening at the Beautiful Things gallery at 16 East St, just off of K Rd, is the art exhibition Missing by Mt Albert artist and poet Lyn-Marie Harris, aka Dizzie Pixie.

Harris has collected more than 140 photographs (supplied by willing contributors) and created posters of "missing'' people, each with a unique fictional profile including name, age, height and their distinguishing features and their last-known whereabouts.

Situations might involve someone running away to join the circus or making a new life with a lover. There are prostitutes and drug runners.

Take Mr and Mrs Moon, for instance. The "Dark side of the moons" sees them living a double life in a caravan as heads of a drug cartel with fake passports that they use to move to the Isle of Wight on England's south coast.

Harris says part of the inspiration for the exhibition is to highlight the idea that you or someone close to you, could at any point go missing in some way, whether mentally, emotionally, physically or spiritually, be it from suffering an injury, dementia or going through the menopause.

The idea came about while Harris was living in Brisbane and was captivated by the missing person's wall in the local police station, which was covered floor-to-ceiling with posters of faces of lost people.

While the exhibition has a dark side, most of the stories have a funny twist.

It's a thought-provoking installation as well as an interactive one, and visitors are invited to sit down and have their photograph taken, on which Harris will write an accompanying missing person profile.

The original artworks are for sale and they have all also been collated into a coffee table book which is for sale at the gallery or via the website beautifulthings.nz.

Harris is donating a share of the proceeds to Youthline, a counselling organisation that works with young people in New Zealand.

Missing opens on Saturday, September 3, and runs until Saturday, September 17, 2022. For more information, visit aucklandfringe.co.nz