'Fade Into Yellow' is John Pennington's third exhibition at Photospace Gallery since 2021 (links below).
The exhibition opens at 5pm on Friday, 11th September. You're most welcome to come along.

"Fade Into Yellow is the result of a collaboration between me, my friend Sarah and her daughter Lenny. In 2024, as part of series of experimental performances designed to shake up Gisborne's city centre, Sarah dressed as she appears in the photographs and performed in various parts of the city. I never caught any of Sarah’s performances live but did see a clip someone had posted on Facebook. The day I saw the clip just happened to coincide with the opportunity to explore upstairs at Lowe St; a two-story building which had previously housed a firm of accountants and a law firm. Whilst the ground floor is still very much in use, the top floor has been abandoned for some time.  Abandonment seems to ground both Sarah’s performance and the state of the building, so we put the two things together. There is a performative aspect to both buildings and people, Buildings perform certain functions and we perform certain functions and display certain characteristics and personalities. There is another aspect of this work, which although I wouldn’t want to stretch this analogy too far is that everything is subject to decay and dissolution, bodies as much as buildings. A logic we spend a lifetime trying to forget."
- John Pennington, 2026

'Hidden in Plain Site' - 2021 Photospace Gallery exhibition
'This is How We Live' - 2024 Photospace Gallery exhibition
'How the Light Gets In'  - 2025 Tairawhiti Museum exhibition
Gisborne Herald 16th September 2025 article (paywalled)
johnpennington.nz artist's site

Wellington Diptychs - Mike Clare

These pairs of photographs, captured around the city, are intended to tell a story in two separate images — a story that is revealed when the photographs are viewed together.

For this series, I chose to work with a Canon Demi half-frame camera from the mid 1960’s. Each frame uses approximately half the area of a standard 35mm negative and, when the camera is held horizontally, produces a portrait-format image.
The half-frame format became an integral part of the project, pushing me to think about photographs in pairs and to make economical use of every frame of film.

40 x 50cm giclée prints, $280 per print, unframed.

SOUTHCOAST - Dean Zillwood
 
This body of work explores the relationship between the natural environment and the human influence upon it. The photographs were made along Wellington's south coast, between Moa Point, Takakena Bay and Breaker Bay. It is a landscape exposed to wind, ocean and weather, but also one that has been used, and at times neglected...

Time. Each of these photographs is a long exposure. During that time the camera records what the eye cannot: the movement of the ocean, the passage of light, and the relentless action of water upon rock and shore. The landscape becomes both still and in motion. For me, time is the force of nature.

Moa Point and the surrounding coastline have been heavily affected by human activity and by decisions made on behalf of Wellington and its residents. Yet nature continues to work upon the landscape. Water moves. Rock erodes. Plants return. Light changes.

Colour is important within these images. It represents something that can be diminished by human action, but also something nature continually attempts to reclaim. Through long exposure, unseen colours are allowed to emerge. The landscape reveals itself.

These photographs are not intended to present the south coast as damaged or ugly. Quite the opposite; they ask us to look again. This coastline is as beautiful as any other. But the way we treat a place influences the way we see it. Neglect becomes part of its identity until eventually we stop noticing either the neglect or the beauty beneath it.

SOUTHCOAST asks what happens when we give the landscape time. Time to recover and be seen again and perhaps, in giving the landscape that time, we might reconsider what we choose to leave behind.

A3 giclée prints, printed upon Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308gsm
$275 Per print, unframed.

Chris Coad

This body of work originated from a commissioned shoot in 2005 for Wellington Guide magazine. The brief was to create a series of images featuring some of Paris and London’s best known attractions while presenting an alternative view of both cities.

Following publication, the images were entered into the 2006 Cathay Pacific Travel Media Awards, where they won the main prize. Since then, the photographs have not been publicly exhibited.

All of the photographs were shot on 35mm film using a very small Ricoh GR point-and-shoot camera.

C-type prints, open edition, $495 per photograph, including frame.

In conjunction with Photobook NZ, Photospace Gallery is proud to present folio box sets by
Craig Potton and Richard Young. The exhibition runs from Friday 7th August to Saturday 15th August . 

Sunday opening  Sunday 9 August, 11am–2pm. Craig and Richard will be minding the gallery for the day.
Artist talk  Sunday 9 August, 11:30am. Craig and Richard talk about their work. Free entry.
Photospace gallery hours  10am–2pm Monday to Friday; 11am–2pm Saturday. Free entry
Also on during Photobook / NZ festival Craig and Richard will have the box sets on their table at the Photobook/NZ Bookfair — Saturday 8 August, 10am–4pm, The Wedge, Level 4, Te Papa, Wellington.

Craig Potton and Richard Young show their Folio Box Sets at Photospace Gallery as part of the New Zealand Photobook Festival — Craig's Moment & Memory alongside Richard's Silence. The two portfolios were first exhibited together at Craig Potton Gallery in Nelson in late 2025, and come to Wellington for the week of the festival.

In an era dominated by digital portfolios, the Folio Box Set revives the near-lost art of owning a complete, tactile collection of fine art prints. Pioneered by photographers like Ansel Adams and Eliot Porter, these sets offer a way to hold a body of work as a curated, collectible whole. Craig and Richard spent the past year refining every print and building the sets by hand — each showing their own, quite different interpretations of the New Zealand landscape.

Richard's 'Silence' portfolio presents an alternative view of the New Zealand landscape — minimalist photographs that invite the viewer to listen, letting the silence speak in the space between objects and the voids surrounding them. View:  richardyoung.co.nz/silence-i

Craig's portfolio 'Moment and Memory' brings together a selection of his finest photographs, offering his own perspective on the New Zealand wilderness — from lush forest interiors to sweeping seascapes and mountains. Box set:  craigpottongallery.co.nz

With thanks to Epson for their support of this exhibition. Craig and Richard spent many hours together refining their folio prints and selecting the Epson papers to best show each other's work. All prints were made on the Epson SC-P906.

Below: photos of the boxed set 'Moment & Memory - Folio One' by Craig Potton

Below: photos of 'Silence' boxed set by Richard Young

Bio: Richard Young
Richard Young is a photographer based in Wānaka, New Zealand. His work is an expressive response to the natural world — a deliberate move away from the grand vista toward quieter, more interior encounters with the landscape. It is held in four collections: Silence I (New Zealand), Silence II (Hokkaido, Japan), Symphony, and Solitude.
Originally from Sussex, England, Richard grew up on a country estate in the South Downs, where an early connection with nature took root. He travelled to New Zealand in 2004 and made it his home, settling in Wānaka to live close to the landscapes he works within. Extended time in Japan, Antarctica and Scotland continues to shape the work.
His photographs have been recognised internationally — including NZ Geographic Photographer of the Year (Landscape and Wildlife, 2024) and awards from the International Photography Awards, the Fine Art Photography Awards and the ND Awards — and his prints are widely exhibited and held in private collections.
Every print is made by Richard himself, in his studio, on archival cotton rag — a level of control over the finished object he considers inseparable from the work. He works with Epson as their fine art printing ambassador, and with Nikon as an official Nikon Creator.

Artist statement - Silence:

This world is so busy, so hard to get away from the noise that we often avoid embracing any silence; acting a little uncomfortable by its presence. Even when it is found, we are easily distracted by the stress in our minds, just as nature’s purest complexity offers a subtle noise within the landscape. I have come to value quiet moments in nature; they allow me time to reconnect with the landscape and try to understand my relationship with it. I find silence in the space between the objects and the voids around them by listening to the landscape and letting the silence speak—before deciding if there’s anything to add to it.

These photographs are my rendition of nature, offering a quiet beauty to express the silence I found. Delicate deciduous trees sit connected to misty mountain peaks, below the long white cloud—offering a contemporary vision of Aotearoa. This non-classical interpretation of the New Zealand landscape tries to evoke a deeper response from the viewer by stripping out the emotional response that comes from an identifiable location. They invite you to consider how wonderful silence is, offering you a chance to escape from any noise in your everyday life. Viewing these prints reminds you to find those quiet spaces, encouraging you to head into nature for a walk and enjoy your own moments of silence.

Prints & Box sets
Richard's Silence Collection is printed to a limited edition of 45 prints; this edition is inclusive of all print sizes.
Folio Box sets 
Boxsets are priced at NZD $3,200 and offer a chance to own all 12 prints that form Richard’s Silence Collection. Production of the folio box sets has been limited to 25 box sets, to make allowance for the printing of larger prints within the same limited edition. Folio prints are sized at 385 x 329mm.
Large Prints
Each print in the collection is also available as a large limited edition print, sized at 700 x 610mm and priced at NZD $2,800.

Bio: Craig Potton
Craig Potton is one of New Zealand's best known landscape photographers and a committed conservationist. For more than four decades he has documented the New Zealand wilderness, exploring the relationship between artistic beauty and the natural world, and in pursuit of that work has tramped and climbed extensively across New Zealand, its sub-Antarctic islands, the Dry Valleys of Antarctica and the Nepal Himalaya. In 2013 he was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to photography and conservation. Pottonandburton
He founded Craig Potton Publishing in 1987, now Potton & Burton, and has published widely — New Zealand Aotearoa is among the country's best-selling pictorial titles, and Classic Walks of New Zealand, The Nature of Things, Moment and Memory, Offerings from Nepal and Here on Earth were each Montana New Zealand Book Award finalists. His work has been exhibited in New Zealand and internationally, including at the Christchurch Art Gallery, the National Gallery of Australia, the Rowe Gallery in North Carolina and the Luksfera Gallery in Warsaw. He also wrote and presented the television documentary series Rivers (2010) and Wild Coasts (2011).
Craig lives in Nelson, where he runs his gallery, and is an ambassador for the Royal Forest & Bird Protection Society.

MOMENT & MEMORY - Suite I, 12 Photographic Prints

The more I pondered a title for this series of New Zealand landscapes that I love, the more I came up against an enigma at the core of my photography. I feel like Timarchus, a young disciple of Socrates, who spoke of drinking simultaneously of the waters of memory and forgetfulness. All my life I have craved knowledge, continuity and coherence and yet have also desired to live freely in the sensuality of the moment. I try to accept the grace of a given moment and live in it and yet I also want to freeze it as a photo. Also for me, the act of photography is not only intuitive but equally informed by my knowledge and enjoyment of the art of others that have so powerfully affected me. Hence the title, Moment & Memory.
Many of these exclusive images are limited edition prints in larger sizes. After considerable thought I felt they could be offered in this small sized set thus making them more affordable and also protecting their exclusiveness. The portfolio itself is confined to 50 sets.