The photobook 'Incidentaloma' is available from Photospace Gallery for $NZ20.00
15x21cm, 38 pages, softcover. 100 only printed.

Mark Beehre has exhibited his photographic work at Photospace Gallery in solo and group shows since 2005. 'Incidentaloma' includes photographs by Mark, John Williams, Ross Scott, and an unidentified photographer. The exhibition opens at 5pm on Thursday 17th July and runs until 15th August, 2025 (extended).

Incidentaloma - curator's statement
 
"In medicine, an ‘incidentaloma’ is an unexpected finding on a scan done for some quite unrelated reason, small nodules that are usually nothing but need follow-up to make sure they don’t turn out to be cancerous. One day in the spring of 2010 when I got off my bike after cycling home my right thumb turned white, cold and painful. This was the third time that week, and the doctor in the Emergency Department suggested a CT scan of the aorta to see if there was anything there that might be causing clots to fly off and land in my thumb. There wasn’t, but what the scan did show was a small lesion, less than a centimetre, in the middle lobe of my right lung: an incidentaloma.
 
"‘It’s a scrappy little thing,’ said the respiratory colleague whom I consulted, but after the 18-month follow-up scan he was less sanguine. ‘This thing’s grown,’ he said in his mellifluous Welsh accent. ‘You’ll have to have it out.’ The surgeon I saw recommended a wedge resection, removing just enough lung to get rid of the lesion. Eleven days later my partner Ross and I sat in his office as he passed the pathologist’s report across the desk. ‘Sections of lung show adenocarcinoma … excision appears complete.’ He was kind and earnest in an awkward, schoolboyish sort of way, and later I said to my friends, ‘When I had cancer I didn’t want empathy or bedside manner. I wanted a surgeon with a sharp knife.’ 
 
"To maximise the chance of cure I was advised to go on and have a right middle lobectomy, removing all the part of the lung that had contained the tumour along with the regional lymph nodes. On 11 June 2012 I was back in hospital for this much bigger operation. I documented the whole process photographically. In the ward my friend John Williams and my partner Ross Scott took photographs, and in the operating theatre I gave a camera to the anaesthetic technician to record the surgery itself. The pictures tell the story. "

- Mark Beehre, July 2025

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]