Exhibition: First Test at Suite

Wellington art-lovers should hurry down to Suite Gallery in Newtown, as it’s the closing week of a new show featuring photography, painting and sculpture, First Test.

The new show includes work from Christchurch based painters Roger Boyce and Marie-Claire Brehaut, Auckland based photographer Jennifer Mason, and Wellington based sculptors Hannah Bremner and Peter Trevelyan, Wellington artists Valerie Bos, Claire Zanelli, Andrew Topp and Grant Muir, and Wanganui based Andrea Gardner.

The show closes February 20, and runs at Suite Gallery, 69 Owen Street, Newtown, Wellington.

Exhibition: Mary Jo Bedford’s Arbour Ardour

A new exhibition by Wallace Art Award Finalist 2009 and Anthony Harper Award Finalist 2009, Mary Jo Bedford opens in Christchurch this weekend, with her latest works displayed as part of Arbour Ardour.

The series of new works are printed on gold or silver brushed aluminium using a Fresnel Zone Plate lens that makes the photographs glow.

ARBOUR ARDOUR – for the love of trees runs from February 10 to March 5, 2010 at Quiqcorp Gallery, 155 High Street, Christchurch. The opening for the show will be on 10 February at 5:30 pm where the artist will be available to meet the public.

Exhibition: Friedlander’s MOKO at FHE

New Zealand icon Marti Friedlander is gifting her series of photographs taken for the Moko project with renowned historian Michael King to Te Papa.

Before the photographs enter their collection, an exhibition of the work, which saw Friedlander and King visit every surviving kuia who wore moko in 1970, will go on display at FHE Gallery in Auckland.

“It is the most moving exhibition, and I was completely overwhelmed with emotion when I saw a preview of these Original Images altogether in the Gallery,” Friedlander told D-Photo.

“I have no doubt that when our descendants want to know what kind of country New Zealand was in the twentieth century, what we did that distinguished us from other peoples, what we looked like, what our character was then one of the major sources for that kind of information and understanding will be the photographs of Marti Friedlander,” said King of Friedlander’s work.

The show runs from February 8 to March 20, 2010, at 2 Kitchener Street, Auckland

Exhibition: Ethiopia – Three Perspectives

Images by Evan McBride
A new exhibition featuring three individual responses to the African nation of Ethiopia is opening at Porirua’s Bottle Creek Gallery tonight.

Ethiopia – Three Perspectives includes the work of photographers Kate MacPherson and Evan McBride, along with multi-media artist Peter van der Burg.

MacPherson’s contribution is a collection of picture taken by underprivileged children living in Mercy Home in Addis Ababa who were introduced to photography for the first time. Any profits from the sale of the works will be donated back to the kids’ home.

Van der Burg travelled to Ethiopia in 2007 and 2008 with teams of New Zealanders for Habitat for Humanity as part of their Global Village program. While there, the teams worked alongside locals to build their houses using the “chika method” building style. The documentary “Chucking Chika” follows the method of this cost effective building technique, while the video wall (a matrix of 4 by 6 computer screens) becomes a dynamic photo display of images that capture the essence of the Ethiopian life as witnessed by the teams.

Also on show is a collection of photographs by McBride, which he shot while working in Ethiopia on the Habitat for Humanity Project.

Ethiopia – Three Perspectives opens January 21 at 5.30, and runs until February 16, 2010 at the Bottle Creek Gallery on the corner of Parumoana and Norrie Street, Porirua.

See Your Photography at Arles

If the idea of having your own pics exhibited at one of the largest photography shows in the world sounds good to you, it’s time to get moving.

Submissions for the Rencontres d’Arles‘ fringe festival close February 15, 2010, with 2000 euros up for grabs in the 2010 Voies Off Prize.

Voies Off supports the discovery of emerging artists, running projections during the first week of the festival in July. Thus far, twenty different nationalities are represented every year. The chosen photographer’s works will be seen by some of the leading editors and collectors on the block. The festival is inviting submissions of 15 – 60 high-definition images on CD from photographers around the world.

For more information on the Arles fringe festival check out www.voies-off.com

Exhibition: Taryn Simon in Dunedin

A new show detailing the inaccessible areas of the USA by American photographer, Taryn Simon, is currently on show at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.

Simon, a photographer on assignment for the New York Times, had been long been thinking about hidden sites around the world, but only embarked on the project after the September 11 attacks in New York.

Some of the images from An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar took Simon as long as a year to gain permission to photograph, but her efforts yielded rare images of high security zones such as government-regulated quarantine sites, nuclear waste storage facilities, prison death rows and C.I.A. offices.

“I felt like I was discovering a new landscape in America – a new terrain – morally and politically,” Simon told the Otago Daily Times.

Taryn Simon: An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar runs at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery until May 9, 2010.