HETEROGLOSSIA 2 is an exhibition by multidisciplinary Lyttelton-based artist Emma Wallbanks. This is her first solo show at JSG, and follows on from the exhibition Heteroglossia held at CoCA in 2020. In HETEROGLOSSIA 2, six striking, medium-format framed photographs command the front gallery. Several are dual images of black & white photographs with outsourced colour slides, while others include text handwritten by the artist. A series of ten much smaller, more intimate works hang on the far wall. Made of hand-printed black & white photographs with outsourced or original slides, the viewer is invited to peer through narrow windows cut into black mats. These works then lead us through to the back gallery, where a super 8mm video is projected on a curved screen.

In her artist's statement, Emma writes "Heteroglossia as a project is concerned with trauma as a central theme. The intention is to collect, transform and regurgitate content that is difficult, discarded, brutalised and maimed, and turn it into something imperfectly beautiful and compelling." She continues "The historical canon has tended to prioritise information on a linear narrative, and my work subverts this. By compiling historical vernacular slides, content that is inherently anonymous and representing the images in a non-linear non-factual way, the result is situated in abstract emotion and leans away from narrative structure. I aim to layer histories and languages and present these in a compelling and emotive manner, intended as a vehicle for empathy..."

Below is an extract from the essay Undertow written by Kristy Dunn to accompany the exhibition: …"Within these acts, the cracks and shadows of a life speak to fragments of a body; a bare torso and ghostly outstretched arm cross a curtain casting shadows of its own. Packets upon packets, shelves upon shelves converse with a bank of dry earth where detritus leads to a pocket of light. Quiet corners of rooms meet exterior facades, the curves of ceiling ducts are interposed with those of the artist’s body, overhead fluorescent lights eerily illuminate meat set for sale before leading the viewer elsewhere. Here, the hard lines, flights, and concrete constructs of our lives engage in kōrero with things we might deem as softer, quiet, more private: a hand blocks, denies; folds in fabric reveal and conceal the body; putiputi open in full bloom. Heavy black borders serve as intermittent breaths between each scene."…

The complete essay has been produced in a brochure, copies of which are available at Jonathan Smart Gallery.