Andrew Ross spent November at Driving Creek, Coromandel,  in 2023 and made a number of large-format photographs. Andrew had the 3rd exhibition at Photospace Gallery, held in March, 1999, and he has exhibited annually here since. The gallery holds a large stock of his initial prints from large format black & white negatives. His work is in the collections of Te Papa, The Sarjeant Gallery, Wellington City Archives, Auckland Art Gallery, The Dowse Art Museum, the Eastern Southland Gallery, et al, and many significant private collections.
The exhibition will open at 5pm on Thursday 3rd April and close on Saturday 10th May, 2025.
Gallery hours are 10am-3pm Monday- Friday, 11am-2pm Saturday, closed Sundays and public holidays.

"Driving Creek Railway and Pottery was started by New Zealand potter Barry Brickell on the outskirts of Coromandel township in the late 1960s. In 1974 it moved to its present site, 80 acres of scrubby hillside that had been denuded of its native forest in the 19th century.
"Barry was legendary for his energy and enthusiasm. Besides pottery, his interests were engineering, railway heritage, architecture, geology and NZ native flora and fauna. He fused all of these threads into a unique overall aesthetic.
 The narrow-gauge track that snakes up the hill was originally to get clay down to the pottery, but was also an expression of its maker's creative vision. Over the years it has be elaborated with tunnels, viaducts and spirals, up to the 'Eyefull Tower' viewing at its highest point. With intensive replanting the forest, including thousands of kauri trees, is regenerating around the 3km of trackline.
"Much has been written about Barry's extraordinarily productive life. He died in 2016 but DCR/P lives on in the spirit of its creator, its three prongs being pottery, railway, and conservation.
"The residents programme allows for four or so visiting artists to be there at a time. I was fortunate to have a month in late 2023, in the company of two ceramic workers and two musicians. It was a fun time and an opportunity to follow in the footsteps of many great NZ photographers and add my little bit to the archive."
- Andrew Ross, March 2025

Jenny Tomlin's photography hasn't had much visibility in Wellington, which is something we plan to remedy in the not-too-distant future. The Well Kept Wilderness revisited opens in gallery room 4 (the office/bar) on Thursday 5th December, 5pm, and runs from 6th December 2024 to 1st February 2025.

The Well Kept Wilderness revisited
 
These images from 1984 and 1985 are a selection from 2 series; The Other Land shown at Real Pictures and The Well Kept Wilderness, made in response to the former but not exhibited until 2017. It was a very creative period for me just after graduating from Elam and working as a Cibachrome printer at Real Pictures, an artist-run print lab and gallery. Alongside honing printing skills, it was a nurturing space to develop my practice amongst like minded photographers.

With both series I was searching for ‘gardens’ – exploring pockets of urban or industrial wasteland and recording the visual vitality in the plant communities changing over time. Later, returning to wilder spaces in the Waitakeres or Coromandel, I wanted to see if the natural landscape evoked similar ideas of order within chaos.

A trackless area along the Waitakere coast was particularly rich. The tide and wind constantly moving the landscape and there is a sense of isolation and freedom. The bulk and weight of the 4x5 camera counter balance this and dictate a slower more thoughtful approach with limited sheets of film. Viewing the subject through the camera’s ground glass under a black cloth transforms it, showing an ephemeral quality. I enjoy the opposing balance of control while being open to the moment. With longer exposures, the sun can change and transform the scene.

This appreciation of time and serendipity still thread through my current pinhole and cameraless work.
- Jenny Tomlin 2024.

Jenny Tomlin Artist Bio
Jenny Tomlin is an experimental photo artist and darkroom printer based in Titirangi, Tāmaki Makaurau. She completed a BFA at Elam in 1984 and hasn’t been out of a darkroom since.  Initially working as a printer at Real Pictures she continued travelling and printing overseas before returning to NZ in 1990. She’s continued to run a darkroom for film photographers since 2002 alongside her personal practice, occasionally exhibiting and running workshops in pinhole and darkroom printing.

Gallery hours: 10am-3pm Mon-Fri, 11am-2pm Saturdays, closed Sundays and public holidays.
Holiday hours: The gallery will be closed from 24th Dec. to 5th Jan. inclusive, and running reduced hours in the week 6th to 11th January, 2025. Contact [email protected]

Exhibition extended to 1st March 2025.
GENDER '70S is Murray Cammick's third exhibition at Photospace Gallery, after 'Flash Cars' in 2020 and 'Music Photos' in 2022.
Gallery hours: 10am-3pm Mon-Fri, 11am-2pm Saturdays, closed Sundays and public holidays.
Holiday hours: The gallery will be closed from 24th Dec. to 5th Jan. inclusive, and running reduced hours in the week 6th to 11th January, 2025. Contact [email protected]

UPDATE 14th Feb. 2025: London-based NZ writer Garth Cartwright visited the gallery and wrote this:
"Being in Wellington as I write this, I found Murray has a photo exhibition called Gender ‘70s on at Photospace Gallery – it focuses on his photos of Maori/Polynesian trans youths who, back then when homosexuality was still illegal in NZ (repealed in 1986 – we were a provincial, conservative backwater…), found gathering on Queen Street a safe space. If you are reading this in and are in oe visiting the Wellington region then head along to Gender ‘70 – free entry, hanging until March 1st. Here’s a profile of Cammick’s photography by Chris Bourke from Art New Zealand, the nation’s long running and foremost visual arts magazine."
Here's a link to the rest of the article in Garth's substack, including the link to the Art NZ portfolio
garthcartwright.substack.com/p/kiwi-time-an-overview-of-life-at (scroll down a bit for Gender '70s)

This new collection of photos by Murray Cammick includes 15 photos that have not been exhibited before plus 20 images that appeared in the 2019 show “Queens St” in the Auckland Photo Festival. That show portrayed different takes on gender, so the title has been changed.
“We have added more images that ruminate on gender – glam pop, theatre queens, show queens and more street queens – they all enlivened our living in the ’70s,” says Cammick.
Singer Mark Williams was top of the Pop Charts with an androgynous threads he sewed himself while Gary Glitter toured as a glam star and as “Frank-N-Furter” in Rocky Horror. Zero, the Suburban Reptiles singer joined the production as “Columbia”.
The Queen Street, Auckland, images were photographed by Murray Cammick while he was doing his V8 series “Flash Cars”. The photographer met the beautiful and bold Keri and Violet Pratt and friends on their nightly walk from a Customs St cafe “Ca d’Or” to Mojo’s nightclub, opposite the Town Hall.
After each curb side encounter, Cammick would print up postcard-size prints and mail them to Keri and Violet’s home address in Glen Innes. They liked the results and on their next photo-stop they would once again pose like fashion models with Cammick as their David Bailey.

“Some nights the city was busy and the girls were as high as kites,” recalls Cammick. “To avoid making a scene we’d disappear down a more private arcade or lane to take photos. One impressed onlooker, a US Marine, asked me: ‘Where do you get these girls?’ I don’t think I replied. Keri, Violet and I left him standing there, as we headed in different directions.”
The photos in the show include Keri and Violet’s other family members – their sister frequently and sometimes their brother  – plus friends who might be looking for a good time, that night.
“Their walk up Queen Street could cause a stir – high fashion, high platform heels and high as a kite,” recalls the photographer. “You would see them approaching and I was usually keen to take photos but sometimes I chose to cross the road to avoid the encounter.”
“In the late 70s there was a mix of subcultures in inner city Auckland. I recall having to run the gauntlet past Babe’s disco to get to the punk club Zwines in Durham Lane and teen punks have claimed they were harassed by V8 guys. For young guys in drag, some nights Queen Street must have been like running the gauntlet.”
Sadly, one of  Cammick’s Queen Street photos of Violet appeared in the Sunday News (27 July 1980) under the heading: “Violet Should Not have Died.”
She had died after being arrested at a nightclub for “not being able to walk without assistance.” Violet died from a drug overdose when left unattended and semi-conscious in the charging room at Auckland Central Police station. She was 27 and the Sunday News wrote, “Violet had been a transvestite for 11 years and was the most beautiful ‘queen’ in Auckland her friends say.”
Cammick’s portraits of Violet and Keri documented the good times. The photographer is unapologetic: “I am pleased that I captured their dream of being fabulous models. Their beauty was real.”

The photographer’s two prior shows – “Flash Cars” and “Music Photos” – were exhibited at Photospace Gallery, Auckland’s Black Asterisk Gallery, and Sydney’s Darren Knight Gallery.
Cammick’s photographs are part of the Te Papa Collection and his work appeared in their 2009 publication, “Art at Te Papa.”
This exhibition of limited edition, silver-gelatin prints were printed directly from the original negatives by Jenny Tomlin.

Gender ’70s
“Murray Cammick’s photographs of the people on and around Auckland’s Queen Street in the late 1970s are a unique record of life in Aotearoa New Zealand.
It was an era when gender stereotypes were being challenged – politically, socially, and culturally. It would be a time of visible change, although homosexuality itself would remain illegal until 1986. ‘Queer Bashing’ by groups of young males could still occur with frequency.
Many young people were seeking a good night out but also discovering an identity in which they could be comfortable. Queen Street was the frequently the venue. It was a reasonably safe public place, relatively free of restriction, without admission-fee, open to the all ages and those who could not afford or could be refused pub or club-admission.
Cammick records the many diverse personalities of Queen Street, their sense of display for an audience, which included the photographer, and the human bonds and camaraderie that existed between the people he met. He captures private worlds in public places.
They are often joyous and generous photographs, admitting a later viewer into a lost world where boundaries were being blurred, where an individual’s personal image was a statement and their life in that gone instant of time was being savoured and experienced.” 
By David Herkt
 
David Herkt is an awarded TV documentary-maker, writer, and journalist. His work includes “Trans-Wellington”. published in North & South July 2024, and “Queen City: A Secret History of Auckland” Jan 25, 2013 on publicaddress.net

Murray Cammick was born in 1953 and currently lives in Auckland, New Zealand, where he maintains his interest in popular culture and music as a contributor to AudioCulture - The Noisy Library of New Zealand Music and as the presenter of his long-running radio show, Land of the Good Groove on 95bFM. His Queen Street photographs are included in the photography collection of Te Papa, the Nation Museum of New Zealand.

Link to article on Regional News site
(Go to page 28)