Curators of Wellington video

I was pleased to be part of Mark Amery’s Curators of Wellington video, part of a series about Wellington galleries. This one about Photospace Gallery featured gallery Director James Gilberd Director and me talking about my series The Long View.

More videos in the Curators series are available on the Cubadupa website.

Interview with Photospace Gallery

I’ve done an interview with James Gilberd, Director of Photospace Gallery, on the occasion of the gallery’s 21st birthday. Photospace is New Zealand’s longest running specialist photography gallery,

The interview is on the PhotoForum website.

Photospace is holding a 21st birthday exhibition with 21 exhibitors.

This is my picture in the show.

Mary Macpherson: from my series ‘of the hill’ (Wellington) (Image: copyright).

 

New world old uses

Reading the recent piece in The Spinoff about the looming effects of Queenstown’s tourist boom made me think of this photograph from my book Old New World.

Limited numbers of the book are available from Rim Books and Photospace Gallery.

Queenstown, Otage, 2010 (sculpture by Robin Coleman)

 

Connections through Te Papa show

Featherston 1980s (from Urban Landscapes) Mary Macpherson

One of nice things about having one of my mid 1980s Urban Landscapes in Te Papa’s major New Zealand Photography Collected show (aside from being in the show) is the opportunity to see the work in the context of the time and to make my own connections with the series I’ve made over the last 10 or so years.

The Urban Landscapes were a response to the excitement of seeing the books by photographers like Stephen Shore, Joel Sternfeld and the New Colour volumes from the States when they first appeared in the 80s. This work gave a kind of permission to approach the prosaic and everyday with visual excitement and make it a site of investigation into the culture. These motivations have continued to wind their way through the work I’m still doing. For example in the early ‘aughts’ I spent seven years photographing the changing futures of New Zealand in small towns – series called Old New World.

Te Teko, Bay of Plenty 2008 (from Old New World). Mary Macpherson

To highlight this connection, Photospace Gallery in Wellington, has some of my Old New World prints their current stock show.

Also on show at Te Papa are several works by Peter Black including this image from the cover of his book I loved you the moment i saw you (VUP 2010)

From ‘I loved you the moment i saw you’, Peter Black

Photospace gallery is also showing work from Peter’s Outskirts series, while another of Peter’s Outskirts images can be found in the Te Papa exhibition.

 

Light and dark of Peter Black

Currently showing at Photospace Gallery in Wellington NZ, is the grass is awfully green by Wellington photographer Peter Black.

For over 30 years Black has been photographing the social landscape of New Zealand. His ‘mission’ statement reads  “My aim is to move the language of photography forward, while describing the social landscape of New Zealand. In the end the work speaks without the artist’s control – it comes from deep within.“

The ‘grass is awfully green’ examines the tension of New Zealand balancing between its past and the ideal of a 100% Pure nation.  As always with Black’s photographs there’s a strong narrative which runs from light to dark and the use of photographs as metaphors and symbols. The work is also available as a limited edition book.

Check out his work at http://www.peterblackphotos.com/new-work.html

From ‘the grass is awfully green’ by Peter Black. (Image copyright Peter Black)

 

From ‘the grass is awfully green’ Peter Black. (Image copyright Peter Black)

 

Special photography workshop

If you’re looking to develop work for a photographic book or exhibition here’s a special opportunity to learn from the experts.

If you know someone who’d be interested in this opportunity, please share the link.

PETER BLACK & James Gilberd Photography Workshop – AUCKLAND

Getting inspiration: developing a body of work

Hosted by PhotoForum NZ, this special photography workshop with Documentary Photographer Peter Black & Photospace Gallery Director James Gilberd, runs over the weekend of 3rd-4^th Nov. 2012 in Parnell, Auckland.

The aim of this workshop is to learn how to produce a body of work that is capable of being exhibited or made into a book, working in black & white or in colour.

Topics include:

• Exhibiting – approaching & working with a gallery, developing a project, artist statements, marketing & publicity, editioning prints, pricing works
• The Print –  printing for exhibition, quality, presentation, signing works, hanging an exhibition
• The Photographic Book – photo book production, processes of design, editing, sequencing etc

For more information click here.

Workshop opportunity

If you’re thinking about getting together a collection of photographs for an exhibition or a book, there’s an ideal photography workshop coming up in April.

Called Getting Inspiration – Developing a body of work it’s run by master photographer Peter Black and James Gilberd, director of the well respected Photospace gallery in Wellington.

The workshop aim is: ‘to learn, through a mixture of practical shooting and short lectures, how to produce a body of work that is capable of being exhibited or made into a book, working in black & white or in colour’.

With a maximum of 10 people, attention to your needs and work should be assured.

Peter Black’s recent book I Loved You the Moment I Saw You (VUP 2011) was described by NZ Herald reviewer Peter Simpson as “a brilliant, moving, and expertly designed and produced book”. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment-reviews/news/article.cfm?c_id=1502967&objectid=10755838

Anthony Byrt in the NZ Listener wrote: “On the surface, then, it’s straightforward street photography. But there is plenty of art underpinning Black’s casualness, both within each image and across the collection as a whole”.

http://www.listener.co.nz/culture/books/photographic-books-december-2011/

The workshop is on the weekend of 14 – 15 April. For more information visit:

http://www.photospace.co.nz/Inspiration_workshop_2012.htm

If you know someone who’d be interested – feel free to share the link!

Welcome

My first poetry collection ‘Social Media’. Published 2019 by The Cuba Press

My poetry collection Social Media launched at Unity Books, Wellington.

It’s available from The Cuba Press, Unity Books and good bookstores in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Here’s an interview I did with Unity Books.

The wonderful cover image is by Peter Black from his Motel Life series.

Four staff rating by Simon Sweetman on Goodreads

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