The photographs for this exhibition were taken near the end of Brian de Montalk's four years in London. There are 22 inkjet prints, scanned from 35mm black & white film. 'East End '78' opens on Friday 9th September, 5pm-7pm, along with Grant Douglas' exhibition 'Going Electric'.

Both exhibitions run from 9th September to 8th October 2022, Normal gallery hours are 10am-3pm Monday to Friday, 11am-2pm Saturday, closed on Sundays and public holidays.

Artist Bio & Statement:

Brian de Montalk is a self-taught photographer living in Petone. He developed an interest in street photography while living in London's East End in the late 1970s. The East End was in stark contrast with bustling wealthy financial hub (City of London) just a stone's throw away.

At the time the East End was a facing massive change from redevelopment, social deprivation and racial discrimination fuelled by extreme right wing groups. This presented opportunities to document some changes over a period of a few days during a cold winter. Brian hopes the selection of 22 prints provides a glimpse of East End, with some of its people, markets, streets and places.

In 1982 one of the prints, Early morning, near Brick Lane (I) (then titled 'A Social Problem') gained an Acceptance in 25th International New Zealand Exhibition  of Photography.

Brian de Montalk's previous exhibition at Photospace was 'A Nation Divided' in 2021.

‘There is nothing so stable as change’
- Bob Dylan

Grant Douglas lives in Motuaka and has exhibited at Photospace Gallery numerous time since his first exhibition here in 1999. Following a period of hand-colouring his black & white silver-gelatin (darkroom) prints with oil paints, Grant has made the move from film-based to digital colour photography. This exhibition, 'Going Electric' was meant to show in 2021 but Covid-19 disrupted the schedule. We are very pleased to have it now. Opening: Friday 9th September, 5pm-7pm.

ARTIST'S PROFILE - GRANT DOUGLAS

I was born in 1951 in Upper Hutt, in the Hutt Valley, surrounded by hills and the nearby (at that time untamed) Hutt River. I quickly became a child gardener.

In the late sixties I attended the then very liberal Wellington Teacher's College, where I picked up a camera, under the mentoring of Des Kelly. I was influenced by the photographers Edward Weston, Minor White, Paul Caponigro and Harry Callaghan but decided my personal vision was to get closer to smaller subject matter.

Photography became a spiritual pursuit, a chance to explore the "otherness of things".

I left Training College and continued gardening growing vegetables and plants in a variety of situations, including 18 years at Riverside Community in Lower Moutere, while also in my spare time pursuing photography. A few years back, my one and only camera, a Pentax Spotmatic, died, so I went digital, exploring colour instead of black and white. It was an exciting new world.

In 2019 I produced a monograph of black and white photos, covering the full period
of my photography, accompanied by found texts - "Hunter of Beauty".
[Copies are for sale at Photospace Gallery, $65.00]

My method in producing my current digital work is not too dissimilar to when I was producing film-based black and white. The subject excites me, and the technique (fairly basic editing) is only there to enhance what I have seen - to communicate better with the viewer, who may interpret the image just as I saw it, or in their own way. All works are untitled to free the viewers mind from the constraints of words and labels.

This is my first solo exhibition of digital-based photographs. All works are archival pigment prints in limited editions of four.

"The only constant is change"
- Bob Dylan