Photographs capture Cook’s time in one of New Zealand’s loneliest places
Why are only some photographs on show in art galleries while most remain strictly personal? The main reason is art photographers make substantial studied sequences rather than catching single moments, and their groups of images may illuminate a special corner of the world.
Mark Adams, whose Nine Fathoms Passage is at Two Rooms gallery, has documented parts of New Zealand which have historical associations. In this case it is Dusky Sound in the southwest corner of the South Island.
Captain Cook visited the sound twice. On his second voyage in 1773 he spent weeks establishing an observatory, and a brewery to make potions to keep his crew free of scurvy. He thought the excellent harbour would be a good place for a port to allow future settlers access to the hinterland.
Later, the sound was briefly used by sealers but since has remained one of the loneliest places in New Zealand. Access is only by sea or air.
How much of this historiography is captured by Adams? First, he establishes links by including photographs of rotting and overgrown stumps of trees that may have been cut down by Cook. One of these is a striking image because the growth on the stump mysteriously resembles a bird. More importantly, his photographs link with the paintings of William Hodges, who accompanied Cook and made drawings for paintings he worked up in England.
The show's major work is a splendid panorama of 11 panels encompassing 360-degrees in a way not available to Hodges but taken from the same tiny island he worked from.
The work is evocative of what the crew saw. The sense of a wet, remote wilderness unifies the panels. There must have been a patient wait to catch the rainbow which appears in one panel and the full flow of one of the precipitous waterfalls that appear out of the bush after rain. The bush is untouched and not disfigured by the pines which have invaded the bush in the Marlborough Sounds in the north. Here and there the light on the water may not quite match between panels but the whole makes a splendid work.
Upstairs at Two Rooms is another series of photographs, this time by Conor Clarke, a New Zealander resident in Berlin. Her mission is to find beauty in the unspectacular and she has taken black and white pictures of piles of sand and dirt from Berlin construction sites.
By careful attention to light and angle of view, these mounds are transformed into the appearance of much-admired views of mountains. The transformation is contradicted only by tyre tracks. These images are more than illusionistic and show a transformative eye of real insight.
At the Ivan Anthony Gallery, Yvonne Todd's show Ethical Minorities (Vegans) is not concerned with transformation but with recording. Her recording has a subtle touch of the irony that is characteristic of her work. She advertised for vegans to sit for portraits. The subjects range from families to a middle-aged cyclist to heavily tattooed young women. All images are sharply characterised but photographed against pale backgrounds. The effect is to make their complexions pale, too.
Also in the show - and much less ironical and more visually exciting - is Clemence, an 11-minute digital video of a striking model in a dress designed by Bob Mackie and worn by Sharon Stone in a film. Thousands of sequins and beads are hand-stitched on sheer netting. The video shows that even the slightest movement by the model makes the work shimmer into a vision.
At Michael Lett Gallery large sheets of scrim have been stretched to make a theatre for two new video works by Steve Carr. Called The Science of Ecstasy and Immortality, they make compelling watching. One, Watermelon, demands half an hour of viewers. Hands reach out and snap rubber bands around a watermelon. As more bands are attached the melon takes on a waist under compression. The band thickens and the melon slowly distorts. There is tension as one awaits the one band that will be catastrophic. It is a long wait but it happens. One band too many bursts the melon and flesh and seeds make an extraordinary cathartic explosion.
Steve Carr's The Bubble.
The other, shorter, video is of action in extreme slow-motion photography. An orb descends towards a red cactus at the screen base. As the orb comes down it is clear that it is a bubble, but lit so that it has two bright lights like eyes and a golden colour. The motion is so slow that when the bubble reaches the cactus spikes there is not a sudden bursting. The spikes penetrate the balloon before it breaks into a spray of stars like the birth of a galaxy.
Both videos are dramatic and poignant metaphors for aspects of human life.
Two illuminating series of photographs: one capturing the remoteness of Dusky Sound and the other transforming heaps of rubble in Berlin into picturesque mountains.
What:Ethical Minorities (Vegans) and New Work by Yvonne Todd Where and when: Ivan Anthony Gallery, Level 1, 312C Karangahape Rd, to May 23 TJ says: Colour photographs show the variety of people who subscribe to a special diet as well as an intriguing video of a dress for a star.
What:The Science of Ecstasy and Immortality by Steve Carr Where and when: Michael Lett Gallery, cnr 312 Karangahape Rd and East St, to May 16 TJ says: Two remarkable videos using slow motion of the fateful end of a watermelon and a bubble as drama and metaphor. Passage to Dusky SoundPhotographs capture Cook's time in one of New Zealand's loneliest places Left, Mark Adams' Nine Fathoms Passage panels; top, Steve Carr's The Bubble, Cactus; right, Yvonne Todd's Clemence.
