Women in Photography NZ and AUS takeover
Posted as part of a takeover on Instagram account @womeninphotography_nz_au in 2021
POST 2
2005 - 2007
@k_jwoods here for post 2. I work at an intersection of photography and painting, informed by a BFA in painting and learning manual photography / printing at high school.
In 2005 I saw an image of Walter De Maria’s Lightning Field, 1977, in a magazine. De Maria placed a great of number of lightning conductor rods in a large field so in a storm lighting will strike the field many times and in a spectacular way. The work was in a place that is that is far away, difficult to get to and only a small amount of people can visit at a time.
I started to think about the way an artwork such as this was recorded in a photograph - so different from the actual artwork which only exists each time for a few moments and then disappears. I became fascinated by the idea of how Land Art had been documented with photography.
Often the works were temporary (sometimes made of earth, smoke and ice) and either continuously moving, changing with the weather or in some cases only existing for a short space of time. I thought photography was an intriguing way to document these works, as it felt static in comparison.
I decided to work through these thoughts by reconstructing Land Art works with cardboard models and photographing them against appropriated backgrounds. I am interested in the way landscape has been portrayed in history, especially since the advent of photography. I chose ubiquitous images from op shops, places that were familiar but inaccessible, as they were generally from another time so the space they depicted could no longer be accessed. I worked through different types of landscape genre background ie. industrial, 40s farm documentation, tourism and the sublime.
These early works used my Dad’s first digital camera. The early years of this series incorporated only a little Photoshop editing with the painted cardboard additions literally attached to found prints then rephotographed.
Ka kite anō au i a koutou,
Kate
POST 3
Ata mārie
@k_jwoods here with Post 3
2008-2010 continued an interest in the documentation of Land Art. I embraced Photoshop’s effects and started working in a collage-like way with digital layers.
My process is journal writing/drawing to investigate concepts / visual language. I photograph, read and do pencil drawings. I source background images, in the past ubiquitous landscape prints from op shops. These days from online collections, copyright cleared for creative reuse. Recently I have taken my own background photographs.
I make marquettes from cardboard, hot glue, acrylic and gouache. I photograph and upload to Photoshop. I cutaway pieces of the foreground and move things into place compositionally. I change the initial composition as I go. I’ll add effects, do a final sweep, flatten and print as a digital C-type photograph (analogue style print on light sensitive paper from a digital file).
2008 onwards I continued my interest in Robert Smithson’s (and his artistic collaborator / editor Nancy Holt) writings ie. the concept of non site.
In 2008, I was introduced to the work of John Stezaker. I enjoyed playing with butting up different appropriated images of a similar genre and the alternate worlds this produced.
I was thinking about climate change/melting icebergs. Not trying to portray it - but it came through subconsciously.
I began working in the exhibitions team (as an assistant registrar / technician) at City Gallery Wellington in 2008 and was a Trustee of Enjoy Contemporary Art Space (2009 / 2010). I felt lucky to spend time with other artist’s amazing work and incredible ideas - so many influences that I can’t name them all here.
The last 3 images reimagine Dennis Oppenheim’s Whirlpool (Eye of the Storm), 1973. The artist used an aircraft to create a vortex of smoke mimicking a tornado. Dennis Oppenheim once said “most art exists in memory aided by photographs’’.
Heoi anō tāku mō nāianei
Kate
POST 4
Kia ora, @k_jwoods here for post 4.
First of two parts, looking at recent series Sites & Settings, exhibited at NorthArt as part of the Auckland Festival of Photography 2021. A project unpicking my relationship with my local Waitītiko creek.
I was interested in how particular artists, over various times and movements within the 20th century, related to their local or imagined natural environments. Artists such as Gordon Matta- Clark, Maureen Launder, Robert Smithson, Nancy Holt, Charles E. Burchfield and Edward Steichen.
My family moved back to Tāmaki Makaurau from Te Whanganui-a-Tara in 2019. We don't have a proper garden, so spent alot of time on this nearby bushwalk in the lockdowns. The Roy Clements Treeway walk is 30 years old. An “urban oasis of regenerating bush “ and the product of a huge amount of community volunteering.
In Energy Tree, Waitītiko Creek, 2021, I used first-hand photography of my local creek. I wanted to start with the base of the real bush but recreate the site; a bit realistic but not entirely. As in JG Ballard’s Sci Fi book, The Crystal World, "Atoms and molecules producing spatial replicas of themselves, substance without mass, in an attempt to increase their foothold upon existence”. A visual cue, as it reminded me of working with Photoshop and resizing.
This work references Gordon Matta Clark’s Energy Tree 1970s drawings, which I am a huge admirer of. Initially, they were based on his interest and concern around alternate forms of housing and town planning using the living environment (he called them ‘breathing cities'). They are somewhat fantastical, almost like buildings made of trees, and some of his drawn forms edge on anthropomorphic.
I live in a heavily built up area of townhouses, supported by an unlikely long sliver of bush sandwiched between a school and commercial shopping area. So it felt appropriate to reimagine Waitītiko Creek as a Gordon Matta Clark Energy Tree drawing. I wanted the marquette element to have a sense of anthropomorphism, of trees starting to become a subtle building-like structure.
Image: Energy Tree, Waitītiko Creek, 2021. Courtesy @bartleycoart
POST 5
Part two - Sites & Settings - Waitītiko creek.
1. Ultrahydrophobicity, 2021
Inspired by Gordon Matta-Clark’s 1970s Energy Tree drawings, I wanted to recreate an experience of finding nasturtiums taking hold in places they shouldn’t. I fondly remember backyard nasturtiums as a child but transported to the treeline, where native species grow, they become weed-like. However, their waterproof leaves are interesting. If Matta-Clark’s premise of living cities was real, then ultrahydrophobic waterproof nasturtium leaves would be perfect roofs.
2. Moonlight - Mahināpua Creek, 2021
The recent Auckland Art Gallery exhibition Toi Tū Toi Ora: Contemporary Māori Art, was an influence, especially Maureen Launder’s illuminated work Wai o te Marama, 2004 described in the exhibition as ‘‘The night turning towards the revealed world…we see restless movements of life begin”. I was influenced by this, trying to capture the essence of an experience in my local bush.
Another influence was Charles Birchfeld’s 50s/60s paintings - which I find to be like a form of synesthesia - he once described hearing sound in the colours of leaves. The natural as portal to the sublime is a bit overstated but often seen in the found images I use, due to their age / initial purpose so connects with his work. I was interested in his visual language: the environmental signs, patterns and cycles. His use of natural phenomena to create modernist pockets of form and and a visual sense of sound.
I was also interested in the intersection between painting and photography. Especially Edward Staichen’s important photograph The Pond - Moonlight, 1904. This a Pictorialist photographic work where in the three different versions, visible brush marks can be seen by the painting of light -sensitive gum directly on the print, creating pastel-like tones. In a sense I was trying to recreate this image using my local creek.
3. Sun Tunnels, Waitītiko Creek, 2021 (Left - install at @bartleycoart 📷 by Cheska Brown)
My re-imagination of Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels, 1973-76, set against my local creek.
POST 6
Mōrena,
@k_jwoods here with post 6
The Water Project
Initiated by @ashburtonartgallery Director Shirin Khosraviani: exploring “cultural, conceptual and imaginative qualities of the rivers, lakes, wetlands and freshwater systems of Aotearoa”. A dream research trip following Canterbury’s waterways with Bruce Foster, Gregory O’Brien, Jacqui Colley, Phil Dadson, Bing Dawe, Brett Graham, Ross Hemera, Euan Macleod, Jenna Packer, Dani Terrizzi, Elizabeth Thomson and Peter Trevelyan.
Six months pregnant, excited to talk to artists, scientists and advocates for wai, I didn’t anticipate the sadness I would feel hearing about its current state and probable future, including the plight of tuna kuwharuwharu (long finned eel) at risk from degradation and damming of braided rivers. Its presence was sited by scientists as being an indicator of awa (river) health.
What stayed with me was a visit to local iwi at Arowhenua Marae, who spoke about their river in a spiritual way and emphasised its life force. In parts of the South Island I felt awe but unfamiliarity. Visiting this river I felt peace, welcome and warmth.
I wanted to suggest / imbue a sense of life force of a braided river, wai and the tuna kuwharuwharu. To catch a sense of paused movement.
The background images sourced from Te Papa, an incredible resource, to link the photographs to each river. Waimakariri River uses a painting by Thomas Attwood. Clarence River and Waiau River watercolours by James Crowe Richmond. Copyright cleared and 1800s. It felt appropriate to use art from this era as backgrounds, in terms of linking to colonialism’s impact on current water degradation.
Futurism encapsulated dynamism suggesting energy, power, life force and movement. I was influenced by Gino Severini’s abstracted dancers (flow of energy) from his early 1900s paintings. Early movement studies in photography and Anni Alber’s interlocking forms and limited palette.
POST 7
Kia ora, @k_jwoods here for post 7
In 2012, I had a life changing experience on a @asianewzealandfoundation residency at Three Shadows Photography Centre, Caochangdi, Beijing. I backpacked through China 10 years earlier and it was amazing to return.
The Centre was founded by the extraordinary RongRong and Inri, well-known for their individual and collaborative photography. It is dedicated to contemporary photography and video art – one of the first in China. It's setting Caochangdi, was a vibrant mix of village life and art galleries. Ai Weiwei lived nearby at the time.
Highlights were visiting Wang Qingsong's studio and his wife Fang's Chinese contemporary art history classes.
I found artist villages compelling. Many had galleries amongst houses/studios, providing space for artists to experiment. Near the outskirts of Caochangdi was ‘Juangita art complex’. Led by curiosity I walked down a dirt road until I came to a clump of half-finished buildings. Greek in style, and so incongruous of their surroundings they seemed surreal and hidden behind was the artist village. Hardly any galleries were open, but its utopian structures were impressive; a huge cubist form of rusted metal and an immense hulk of grey minimalist brick formed another gallery. A giant spider sculpture swung eerily from the power lines.
In China I researched constructed photography and how the beginnings of contemporary art evolved there. I became fascinated by the Xiamen Dada Group, an important part of the avant-garde 85' Wave Movement, especially the photo documentation of their happenings and performance from 1986. I was interested in how contemporary art developed in China. One of the Xiamen Dada's key events took place after their exhibition at the government-run New Art Museum in Xiamen. On closure of the exhibition they burned all of their artwork outside the gallery in a performance.
Ngā mihi
Kate
POST 8
Post 8 @k_jwoods
A fun project for my last post. In 2016 my Dad and I collaborated on an exhibition together - Camera Hunting.
We both grew up in homes full of old copies of the National Geographic, and share an interest in wildlife/environment and the history of photography.
John, my Dad, enjoys architecture, street and landscape photography but in the last 15 years a large proportion of his subject matter has been documenting wild birds.
Dad explained there are broadly two types of Wildlife photography. The first focuses on stationary portraits or ‘ID photos’, sometimes taken by birdwatchers or scientists. The second focuses on storytelling i.e. wild birds in their natural environment that also tell a story about how they live: nesting, feeding their young, flying, fighting, etc. His work is a combination of the two. Focus and sharpness is crucial, especially around the eyes, to identify facial features and feather detail.
I responded to his photography with a series investigating the historical depiction of birds in photography, sculpture and painting.
I focused on the last 150 years of birds featured in photographic inventions / art movements, such as French photographer Étienne-Jules Marey’s experiments into Chronophotography, the predecessor of film, in the 1880s. Marey’s work, in the dynamics of movement, influenced Italian Futurist Giacomo Balla - his paintings of the early 1900s include abstracted flight paths of birds. Hummingbirds featured in American Harold Edgerton’s pioneering work with electronic flash photography in the 1930s. Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncuși often used the form of the bird in his work - his abstract sculpture Bird in Space, 1923 caused controversy, subsequent discussion and change in public opinion over what constituted ‘art’.
Thanks for having me on this platform!
Kia ora rawa atu
Kate