Rita Angus’s painting ‘Cass’ has become one of New Zealand’s most iconic paintings. Here, Peter Peryer brings the subject firmly into the present with a contemporary photograph of the small railway shed at Cass. Like other contemporary artists who have visited Cass, Peryer does not set out to create a photographic documentary record of an unknown landscape, rather he consciously visits a landscape that has been made famous by art. Interestingly the Cass railway shed was painted white during the 1980s. In the late 1990s it was repainted its original red in a deliberate reference to Angus’s famous painting – a clear case of life imitating art. (Brought to light, November 2009)