Tēnei Ao Tūroa – This Enduring World

Te Pataka Toi Adam Art Gallery’s latest exhibition features three distinct bodies of work by three photographic artists: Mark Adams, Natalie Robertson (Ngāti Porou) and Chris Corson-Scott.

They have been brought together by Adam Art Gallery Director, Christina Barton, because the three artists share an approach to their medium that links their bodies of work and makes for a gallery installation where threads can be drawn and dialogue enabled that makes visiting a particularly enriching experience.

All three photographers use large-format analogue technology to produce largescale colour and black and white images of great detail and lush tone. All explore particular sites that have loaded histories that speak of human encounter and occupation and their formational and fraught effects. All three approach their role as image makers with deep seriousness, understanding how their practice extends and complicates the history of representations of which they are a part. And in all three historical images find their place both physically and as echoes.

Yet these artists come to their projects from different perspectives. Natalie Robertson uses her camera to connect directly to the whenua of her tīpuna, Adams understands his problematic status as a Pākehā observer, and Corson-Scott calls upon a rich store of colonial representations that function at the level of his pictures’ ‘subconscious.’ Together they offer viewpoints that deepen our understanding of our complex history, and our shared and separate predicaments.

Image: Natalie Robertson, A Red Tipped Dawn – Pōhautea at Waiapu Ngutu Awa (7th August 2020), 2020, C-type gloss photographic print. Courtesy of the artist.