John Pennington - artist statement
"The work in this exhibition: This is How We Live is taken from an ongoing project based in Tairāwhiti Gisborne. The impetus for this project comes from the need to locate myself as a recent arrival into Tairāwhiti and to reflect the diverse nature of this community.       

"I arrived in Tairāwhiti Gisborne in May 2022, just a few months before the East Coast was hammered by cyclone Hale and then by the monster of them all, Gabrielle. A hell’uva introduction. Although it’s impossible to ignore the effects of such devastation, the work - and there are images that reference this - isn’t preoccupied by it. Instead, the current and ongoing work focuses on the people, events and jobs that tie this community together to make it the unique place it is. Māori presence and influence are major factors in understanding Tairawhiti: history is ever present. Tairāwhiti is where Cook first encountered Māori, and that didn’t go so well. This is not easily forgotten, and emotions still run deep as one of the images testifies. Living and working in Tairāwhiti brings you closer to New Zealand’s colonial past and its ongoing effects more proximately than many other places in New Zealand. I am constantly reminded of this in my approach."

John Pennington is a Gisborne-based photographer. He is a member of the PhotoForum committee and teaches photography through the ACE programme at EIT. His photographic interests include rocks, urban spaces, and going out into the world. This is How We Live is his second exhibition at Photospace Gallery, after Hidden in Plain Site in 2020.

Heinz Sobiecki has had numerous solo exhibitions at Photospace Gallery since 2003, when he retired from life as a fashion and commercial photographer - a career he began in NZ after arriving from Germany in the early 1960s. Most of his exhibition work has been black & white and hand-printed in his own darkroom, but this series was been printed digitally (by Oliver at Picaflor Fine Art Printing on Ilford Smooth Rag paper). He took the photos on his recently-acquired Leica M11 Monochrom - something of a work of art in itself. The camisole in the photographs was bought in Berlin in 2015.

The exhibition opening is on Saturday 7th September, 11.30am to 1.30pm - no formalities. You're welcome to come along. Heinz's exhibition runs till 5th October.
Gallery hours: 10am-3pm Monday-Friday, 11am-2pm Saturdays.
Closed Sundays and public holidays. Admission free. Works are for sale.

Photospace Gallery is proud to have shown exhibitions by Lucien Rizos since 2007. It's fair to say these exhibitions have taken varied forms ranging from conventional framed black & white photographs to installations of large colour prints, documents and ephemera (like this one), as well as video installation.

'Marble Art Ltd.' exhibition opens in room 1 of Photospace Gallery on Saturday 6th July, between 11.30am and 1.30pm. You're most welcome to come along.
There is a limited number of 'Marble Arts Ltd' photo books available for sale at the gallery.

Marble Art Ltd. was the business established 1957 in Wellington by John Fotiadis, the uncle of Lucien Rizos, who in 1951emigrated from Romania, through Greece, to New Zealand. The business was a manufacturer of souvenirs and objet d’art for the Kiwi home. 
 
In 1977 John Fotiadis returned to Romania and built a factory to supply these products to a European market.

This exhibition concerns a Marble Art Ltd. catalogue printed in Trig-Jiu Romania, that documents wares from chess sets and lamps to coffee tables, and draw upon motifs from many civilisations.

Amongst the items are a number of designs, originally produced in Wellington for the New Zealand tourist and domestic market, that reflect a newcomer’s efforts to respond to Maori cultural forms.

On the gallery’s walls Rizos’ reconstruction of the Marble Art Ltd. catalogue details a 1970s Romanian view of New Zealand conceived wares designed to appeal to a European market.

The small publication mimics the form of the original Romanian catalogue.
This publication also includes an insightful contribution by Damian Skinner.

Subject: PRECIS and restructuring of interview with Gerald
LR
Date: 13 November 2016 at 1:35 PM

John Fotiadis was born in Kisinov, Basarabia. His mother's line came from a big population of Greek traders in Turkey... Smirna.

In 1951 John Fotiadis came to New Zealand, with his wife, from Athens, where he worked for the International Refugee Organisation as an interpreter. He spoke Romanian, Greek, Russian and French, as well as English, which he learned in his home town of Bucharest, Romania. (.It is said that Romanians have a great affinity for languages because of the countries surrounding it, or ones that it had been involved with, such as Ukraine, Poland, Serbia, and Turkey.)

In New Zealand, his first business was a house painting firm, Ideal Decorators; but he was always looking out for other business opportunities.

made the leap from house painting to figurines when he went back to Romania for the first time since the end of WW2... that turned out to be the spark, when he saw what the Italians were doing. He bought moulds from Pisa, and from Volterra, where the alabaster works were. Buying sacks of alabaster, he returned to New Zealand with the rights to reproduce them. there were a lot of technical problems to overcome; but they were worked on by the co director Vasilios Bertos and john Fotiadis. They would experiment with techniques to imitate ivory, jade etc, after a day's work in the painting firm.

MAORI FIGURINES... no market research was done, but JF thought why not supply Duty Free stores and tourist shops with this sort of thing. "...to be able to create these statues to appeal to the Maori..." The Figurines were conceived by a sculptor Jim Gawn.

Q..do you think uncle John was conscious there may be a problem with the Maori? A... yes he was. But I took to the factory. Also --, Labour member for  "At the time there was no objection from Maori to not receiving royalties or Koha for the use of Maori subject matter. Since then someone in Featherston has bought the business; but not sure how they stand with cultural rights. I think it is essential to find out what the position is today...

Under Norman Kirk and Matiu Rata, we were anxious to see the evolution of this trend of Maori self determination."

Greek and Romanian Immigrants working in the factory... in the 70's NZ's unemployment rate was much lower. And the rules were different. After working for 3 months people were able to leave and go back on the Unemployment benefit immediately. One of the problems JF had was training them each time. It they were not economic until fully trained, but it took months to master the craft. So when Greeks and Romanians passing through Wellington decided to work there, and wanted to settle down and stay on at the factory, the Immigration Dept objected, saying New Zealanders took priority at the expense of the foreign workers.

Romanian factory in Trig-jiu...

Early on there was an Indian entrepreneur in Wellington, who had connections with India. And his idea was to set up the factory in India instead of Romania. The advantages of India were lower taxation and cheaper labour costs. But JF chose Romania because he had a natural affinity of returning to his own country, but without leaving New Zealand.

According to the contract with the Romanians, signed in October 1977, having built the factory he handed over industrial expertise, on the condition he received a proportion of the profits made by the Trig-Jiu factory from their export trade. As it turned out the Romanians produced only for the local market, and JF did not receive a cent for all his troubles...

A lot of work was done for him in Australia, his products being introduced to a number of Australian companies such as Grace Brothers and David Jones. But he did not take this further,... M Art was large enough to take on the Australian market.

Opening up NZ markets to cheap Asian Imports...

Q... did the business eventually decline because of Govt policy, or did his figurines become unfashionable. A... " Govt policy here did not give a stuff for locally produced products". JF did not follow fashion trends, and did not select the right markets. He never reached the stage you could say the business was taking off. He needed to change his attitude towards sales. But he was reluctant to do that, because it meant raising the capital to expand. At one stage he was reluctant to take on more orders because he was unable to fulfil them. That was a problem a lot of NZ exporters faced.

In time he did take out loans to sustain the expansion ideas he had ...... but needed more time to pay back taxes. He produced evidence that he was able to operate the business and employ people, along with raising the money. But the IRD wanted his back taxes paid back immediately..... This eventually resulted in Marble Art filing for bankruptcy....?

Below - essay on Lucien Rizos' project by Damian Skinner. Please do not copy - reference only.