4x5x6 - exhibition curated by Thomas Slade

Four x Five x Six - Photospace Gallery, 22 September to 20 October, 2018.
Opening on Friday 21 Sept, 5.30-7.30pm.

This is a group exhibition of six New Zealand photographers whose work was made using 4"x5" large format cameras. Thomas Slade returns to Photospace Gallery as an curator/exhibitor a little over a year after his exhibition 'What Brings You Here? - A Tale of Two Towns'
The photographic artists in Four x Five x Six are: Harry Culy, Sam Curtin, Tash Hopkins, Tom Hoyle, Clayton Morgan, and Thomas Slade.

Review on PhotoForumNZ site

Harry Culy

About:
Harry Culy is a documentary photographer and artist whose work arises from personal observations of vernacular life in both New Zealand and Australia. Currently he is engaged with two ongoing bodies of work ‘The Gap’ set in Sydney Australia, and ‘Rose Hill’ which explores the wider Hawkes Bay region. He is also involved in publishing art and photography books through the small publishing company Bad News Books. He is represented by Parlour Projects Gallery (Hastings).

In this ongoing body of work I am exploring a geographical area of the Hawkes Bay to investigate wider conversations around notions of place, belonging and displacement. As a child, I would travel to my grandmother’s farm, Rose Hill, in Maraekakaho, in central Hawkes Bay. After spending several years abroad, I recently returned to Rose Hill and experienced an odd sense of disconnection to this landscape that was once so familiar. This bittersweet feeling became the natural entry point for this project. Taking inspiration from the Aotearoa Gothic Art tradition, and drawing on childhood memories, ‘Rose Hill’ sets out to document vernacular scenes in Hawkes Bay and explores the liminal spaces between the past and the present, between the natural world and the human world, between belonging and disconnection, between the familiar and the unfamiliar. The first part of this project has been shown at Parlour Projects Gallery in Hastings, in November 2017.

Photo: Harry Culy

Sam Curtin

About:
Sam Curtin is an emerging film photographer based in Wellington. His main interests lie in documenting subtle everyday scenes, often overlooked, that have an intriguing depth to them once captured.

Statement:
This series "Dents" looks at various human marks made on the New Zealand landscape. These marks can be grand or small, but often are subtle enough to fade into our background noise. Scenes like these are just as much a part of the New Zealand landscape as any. The images depict views of the everyday roadside that are typically overlooked as they are passed by. The parallel view I have employed in these photographs can help us to give meaningful attention to the quiet beauty within these views but they also expose the subtle and sustained impact us humans leave on the land.

Photo: Sam Curtin

Tash Hopkins

About:
Tash Hopkins is an Auckland based photographer who shoots a mixture of personal and assigned work. She studied photography at Wellington Polytechnic then spent four years in London working as an assistant. She documents stories she finds compelling and emotive.

Statement:
Her portrait series, The Western Springs Project is a study of the representation of youth. She looks beyond the generalised images of teenagers often seen in mainstream media and instead portrays them as individuals showing depth, complexity and vulnerability.

Tash’s landscape work focuses on the emptiness of New Zealand. She makes images in remote areas as reminders of a time when people didn’t inhabit the land. Tash works with a large format camera because she believes it creates a more considered interaction between the photographer and the subject.

Photo: Tash Hopkins

Tom Hoyle

About:
Tom began his career as an outdoor sports and nature photographer and is frequently published in climbing magazines, books and calendars in New Zealand and internationally. He remains one of New Zealand's finest rock climbing photographers and works for the New Zealand Alpine Club in this capacity. Tom went on to become a fine arts photographer, completing a diploma in
photography from Massey University and then a Master of Fine Arts degree. As the holder of an Honours degree in Philosophy from Canterbury university, Tom’s fine arts practise is marked by its philosophical approach.

Tom frequently exhibits and collaborates with artists in Wellington and further afield, including the Wavelength exhibition at Bowen House in 2014 and It's Our Fault at the Clyde Quay Wharf Art Space in 2015. He has collaborated with Elizabeth Thomson in recording her process for her exhibition Invitation to Openness — Substantive and Transitive States at the Dowse Art Museum in 2014, with Swiss artist Sasha Huber on her Demounting Agassiz project in 2015, with Distinguished Professor Anne Noble and Professor Lisa Matisoo-Smith on The Longest Journey, and this year with choreographer Sacha Copland for the exhibition Tread Softly at Toi Poneke.

Artist Statement:
Tom’s large format work makes the most of the format’s ability to record staggering amounts of detail within a frame. His images here seek out the largely unseen activities of human industry and intend to project a wealth of detail for the eye to linger over. These photographs are captured with the long and carefully-composed exposures that have defined large format photography throughout its long history. Tom is a dedicated hybrid shooter, printing from digital scans of large format negative and slide film, but also able to capture digitally through his view camera, and thereby he chooses what he thinks is the best medium for any particular scene he photographs. All three of those capturing mediums are represented in this series.

Photo: Tom Hoyle

Clayton Morgan

About:
Clayton Morgan is a photographer based in Blenheim. Clayton completed a Bachelor of Design with Honours (Photography) at Massey University, Wellington, in 2016. Inspired by the New Topographic movement and painters like Gerhard Richter, Clayton’s work is heavily centred around the markers of human presence in nature; documenting various visual contrasts or temporary landscapes. Clayton’s projects have evolved towards exploring sites and themes of scientific research, technology and industry - particularly cosmology and astronomy. His characteristic use of bold colour and composition is influenced by his attraction to abstract painting and his time studying fine art. His aim; to combine documentary and fine art through large format photography.

Artist Statement:
This series of images capture the interior spaces of the Physics and Astronomy Department at the University of Canterbury’s Mount John Observatory. The Observatory is also a popular tourist destination, located in the Aoraki Mackenzie International Dark Sky Reserve. This site brings together international research efforts between Japan and New Zealand. The images show routine maintenance on the MOA telescope. MOA is a micro-lensing telescope used for discovering extrasolar planets. Beneath the green veil in one of the images, lies a multi million dollar camera sensor of the telescope. The expansive structure of the telescope is a bold representation of how technology has developed and continues to expand our understanding of the universe. Bold colours and unique architecture unite new technology and the sites heritage.

Photo: Clayton Morgan

Thomas Slade

About:
Originally from Nelson, I have been based in Wellington for the past 7 years. Between 2005 and 2010 I lived in Canada and after exploring the capabilities of my low end digital camera I returned to New Zealand to formally study photography. It was during my study that I decided to focus my photography on being an exhibiting artist. My projects are research-based and examine the interaction of people with their environment, although in my current series I have examined my own interaction with the environments that I encounter. Working with large format photography I utilise its power of observation through its considered approach and ability to reproduce detail. I also use digital photography and the method of ‘constructed photography’. I view constructed photography as a method that positively challenges photography's problematic relationship to truth while also acknowledging the role of the photographer in the creation of the photographic image.

Artist Statement:
After completing a heavily researched-based, conceptual photographic project for my Master of Fine Arts Degree, my current project uses a simpler conceptual framework and focuses on my visual connection to locations I encounter. It might be a building, an empty mall, or an isolated object; something about the space intrigues me visually so I photograph it. While applying an educated eye to the spaces I photographed I have attempted to portray the spaces in a subtle manner. In the past I have often waited for light and environmental conditions to do something special but I feel this has the ability to separate the photograph from the viewer. I see this process as actively engaging with the photographs association as a document, a relationship that challenges the core of my photography.

Photo: Thomas Slade