Exhibitions
Events
On display
Things That Shape Us
John Miller Amandla. Unite against Racism 1981. Photograph. Courtesy of the artist
Talk
Past event
Meet in the exhibition
Free
Join curator Melanie Oliver and several of the artists from this new exhibition for a discussion about the role of documentary practices and collective action.
Things That Shape Ushings features artists Fiona Amundsen and Kanariya Eishi, Matthew Galloway, Janneth Gil, John Miller, Natalie Robertson, Alex Monteith and Graeme Atkins, Miranda Parkes, Ella Sutherland, Tim J. Veling.
This exhibition includes artists who use documentary practices to encourage collective action. Working in the aftermath of traumatic events, they ask us to reconsider how we think of ourselves and demand a more democratic society.
Related
Exhibition
Things That Shape Us
21 November 2021
Art, democracy and collective action in the aftermath of trauma.
Collection
Tim J. Veling Halley Place, Avonside, 2015, Spring, During a Nor-west Wind
Tim Veling’s photographs document the passing of time in what used to be Christchurch’s riverside suburbs, the red zone. Cleared of houses and people, the area is being gradually overtaken by nature. In Veling’s photographs, days pass, nights fall, the seasons come and go. But traces of human occupation remain as vestiges of a way of life. Veling documents the landscape at a time when the former use of the land is still – just – visible, but before its future use has yet been established. It is a political no-man’s-land, waiting for a solution. Meanwhile nature proceeds to claim the land back at its own pace. Veling’s vision is of the suburban landscape as a romantic ruin, perhaps in the tradition of eighteenth-century landscape painters making the Grand Tour; rather than gazing on fragments of classical statuary and architecture, visitors to Christchurch’s river suburbs encounter overgrown garden boundaries and hurricane fencing. It might be more accurate to say that Veling photographs post-quake Christchurch as an unromantic ruin – a place as much subject to political machinations as to natural forces.
(Now, Then, Next: Time and the Contemporary, 15 June 2019 – 8 March 2020)
Collection
Tim J. Veling Halley Place, Avonside, 2015, Autumn
Tim Veling’s photographs document the passing of time in what used to be Christchurch’s riverside suburbs, the red zone. Cleared of houses and people, the area is being gradually overtaken by nature. In Veling’s photographs, days pass, nights fall, the seasons come and go. But traces of human occupation remain as vestiges of a way of life. Veling documents the landscape at a time when the former use of the land is still – just – visible, but before its future use has yet been established. It is a political no-man’s-land, waiting for a solution. Meanwhile nature proceeds to claim the land back at its own pace. Veling’s vision is of the suburban landscape as a romantic ruin, perhaps in the tradition of eighteenth-century landscape painters making the Grand Tour; rather than gazing on fragments of classical statuary and architecture, visitors to Christchurch’s river suburbs encounter overgrown garden boundaries and hurricane fencing. It might be more accurate to say that Veling photographs post-quake Christchurch as an unromantic ruin – a place as much subject to political machinations as to natural forces.
(Now, Then, Next: Time and the Contemporary, 15 June 2019 – 8 March 2020)