Born in Switzerland in 1947 and educated at Auckland and Geneva Universities, Max Oettli is a photographer, writer, and teacher. His last appointment was as Principal Lecturer, photography, at the Dunedin School of Art. He has been living between Wellington and Geneva.

Recently he deposited and catalogued his New Zealand photographs 1966-76 at the Alexander Turnbull Library. A major show is in preparation at the Auckland Art Gallery, and he is featured in the Te Papa exhibition  'The New Photography' beginning mid-June 2019.

This is Photospace's first exhibition of Max Oettli's photography. We look forward to exhibiting a larger selection of his vintage and recent work in future.

This exhibition will feature two series of photographs;

• 'A portrait of a house' - Step back in time to John Fields' forensic study of a humble abode in The Residence of Ivan Millett Esq. 1969-70.
  

 

• 'A blast from the past' - Experience the freewheeling ambience of a beer at The Kiwi Hotel 1973-75. 
  

All new prints - archival pigment on 100% cotton rag. 

This is John Fields' third show at Photospace in conjunction with Galerie Langman. Previously: 'Forty Years Ago Today' (2008) and 'Signature Series' (2016). Along with the two featured series,  we are exhibiting selection of vintage silver-gelatin prints in gallery room 4 - the office.

John Fields - artist bio

John Fields (1938-2013) began a professional photographic career after US Navy service in the Pacific. Arriving in NZ in 1966, he built his darkroom in the new School of Medical Sciences at University of Auckland.

In 1972 he exhibited at the prestigious Carl Siembab Gallery in Boston and was a president of PhotoForum (1972). A driving force, he edited the first monograph of contemporary NZ photography in Photography: A Visual Dialect - 10 contemporary N.Z. Photographers (1971). His work was the first to be acquired for the collection of contemporary NZ photography at the Auckland City Art Gallery and in 1975 he was the first recipient of a QEII Arts Council grant for photography for his Thames project (exhibited 2017).

His highly regarded and influential work is held by the major museums and he is featured in The New Photography (June - October 2019) at Te Papa, with Max Oettli and others.

Both John Fields and Max Oettli are in the book 'The New Photography' by Athol McCredie, (Te Papa Press, 2019). The cover photo is by John Fields.

The exhibition 'John Fields | Max Oettli' runs from 14th June to 13th July 2019 at 37 Courtenay Place, Wellington. The gallery's regular hours are 10am-4pm Monday-Friday and 11am-4pm Saturday. After-hours viewing by appointment.

Note: this exhibition has been extended till Friday 7th June.
Closed Queen's Birthday, Monday 3rd June.

"Harking back to the 19th century when artists like Alfred Sharpe and John Kinder were making images of the city-in-progress that would become colonial Auckland, Mary Macpherson’s ‘long view’ of Tāmaki Makaurau is both a product of its times and an imaginative response to the subtropical metropolis.

"Her photo-sequence also asks questions of its subject: To what extent does the evolving urban environment reflect the needs, desires and dreams of its population? Do the communities that live and work within the metropolis determine its shape and direction, or is the city the orchestrator and shaper of the lives of its citizens?"

- Gregory O'Brien

Mary Macpherson's exhibition 'The Long View - Auckland photographs 2014-2017' is showing at Photospace Gallery from 3rd May to 3rd June, 2019. Mary has been exhibiting at Photospace Gallery since 2014 - artist info.

The Long View - reviews, interviews, video

• Interview with Lynn Freeman, Radio New Zealand, Standing Room Only 2018
• The Spinoff, 2018
• Review by Jodie Dalgleish in Landfallonline, October 2018
• Podcast interview with Andy Spain
• Video interview by the Wallace Arts Trust
• Article by Mary Jane Duffy, Art New Zealand, Spring 2018 (not online - copy to view in gallery)
  
• Interview about editing, DPhoto magazine, Sept. 2018
  

'The Long View' exhibition is part of the Photival festival of photography in Wellington, 4th-26th May 2019

I hope you enjoy these pictures of birds and of the inner life of Rembrandt's paintings. Please sit a while!

My lovely dog doesn't like birds. I've watched him race down Paekakariki Beach countless times, frantically trying (and failing) to catch them.

Watching those birds scatter off in all directions, I've remembered Charles Darwin's thoughts about ‘endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful’ and John Berger’s theories on ‘ways of seeing’. Each movement can create innumerable forms, depending on how you look.

In Rembrandt's centuries-old paintings I see the same vitality, life and movement as I do in those birds. I've never seen an original, but I can reach out to them.  Figures appear dreamlike – often sad, always beautiful – through the pale blue glow of my laptop screen. I long to see the paintings.

A hundred years ago Anton Chekhov's ‘The Student’ saw the past as ‘an unbroken chain of events all flowing from one to another’. While I'm not saying Rembrandt's paintings have anything to do with my dog's sincere desire to chase any and every bird on the beach, I am saying that movement never has to stop. A painting’s life remains in motion in the digital world, just as a bird's flight leaves ripples in the sky.

As Chekhov’s Student found - when you touch one end of the chain the other trembles.

Camus Wyatt - ‘A thin streak of light’
January 2019

Camus Wyatt's exhibition 'A thin streak of light' is at Photospace Gallery, 37 Courtenay Place, Wellington, from 16th February to 23rd March, 2019. The exhibition comprises a series of photographs on lightboxes (in room 1) and a series of archival pigment prints (Rembrandt series) in rooms 3 and 4.
The exhibition opens on Friday, 15th February, 5pm-7pm. You are most welcome to attend.