John Pennington - 'Fade Into Yellow' - 11 Sept to 10 Oct, 2026, Photospace Gallery, 37 Courtenay Place, Wellington, Aotearoa NZ

'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

Photograph from 'Fade Into Yellow' by John Pennington