Artist Meg Porteous in Conversation with Hanahiva Rose

Join artist Meg Porteous in conversation with Hanahiva Rose, the Gallery’s Assistant Curator Contemporary and Collections. They will be discussing Porteous’ experience as one of the Govett-Brewster's 2020 artists ‘In Residence’. Porteous’ residency has culminated in the offsite exhibition Germinal centre, with Porteous’ work taking to the streets on billboards and posters across New Plymouth’s CBD.

Raised in New Plymouth, artist Meg Porteous is now based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Porteous works primarily in photography and film, employing a mix of analogue and digital processes. Her practice considers common tropes in photography’s history – in particular documentary, surveillance and self-portraiture – focusing on the tension between truth and fiction that exists in the medium.

During her residency Porteous focused on two key photographic genres: the family photograph and the stock image. Drawing on an archive of more than 30 years’ worth of negatives taken by her mother, Porteous examines the relationships – and tensions – between the dynamics of family, the family photo album, and the conventions (and hyper-proliferation) of stock photography.

Porteous holds a BFA (Photography) from Ilam School of Fine Arts, University of Canterbury and a MFA from Elam School of Fine Arts, The University of Auckland. Her recent exhibitions include The gift, self-initiated project (2020); Juncture, Neo Gracie (2020); Uncomfortable Silence, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū (2020); videowork, Window Gallery (2019); Tears in rain, Hopkinson Mossman (2019); Tilt, Hopkinson Mossman (2018).