Festival photography exhibition explores documentary medium

Four strikingly different uses of photography, by artists from New Zealand and abroad, are being presented at Victoria University's Adam Art Gallery from next week to coincide with the New Zealand International Arts Festival 2012.

The suite of four exhibitions is collectively called 'Camera Work' to suggest the serious and sustained ways in which artists use their equipment to record and respond to their subjects.

"This exhibition demonstrates how photography is used as a means of research," says Adam Art Gallery curator Laura Preston.

"But the results don't assume that photographs provide us with all the answers; rather they show us the scope and limits of what a photograph can show and tell."

Recording actions, exposing clandestine encounters, capturing a social scene, or testing how we make sense of specific sites are the activities engaged by these artists, all of whom have developed reputations for their installations and series.

Below is a brief overview of the works that will be on display.

Simon Starling Autoxylopyrocycloboros
Turner Prize winning British artist Simon Starling presents a photographic slide projection documenting a strange act of sabotage on a loch in Scotland.

Kohei Yoshiyuki The Park
A rare opportunity to see Japanese photographer Kohei Yoshiyuki’s notorious series, The Park, which documents late-night trysts in parks around Tokyo that have been reprinted for the first time since their first showing in the 1970s.

John Lake The Campus
Wellington-based artist John Lake captures life on campus at Victoria University during 2011, a project commissioned for the university’s art collection.

Fiona Amundsen The First City in History
New Zealand artist Fiona Amundsen focuses on the historic centre of Hiroshima to see how that city memorialises its traumatic past, yet shows us how hard it is to grasp the enormity of the destruction caused by the first atomic bomb ever to be detonated in wartime.

What: Camera Work
Where: Adam Art Gallery
When: 24 January-15 April 2012
Free entry

The Park is a joint project with the Centre of Contemporary Photography, Melbourne and IMA, Brisbane. Fiona Amundsen's The First City in History is supported by Asia New Zealand Foundation, New Zealand Japan Exchange Programme and AUT University. John Lake's project was commissioned for the Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection in 2011.Simon Starling's work is staged in partnership with The Physics Room, Christchurch.

www.adamartgallery.org.nz