Tamatea - Dusky Sound 1995 is part of Auckland Festival of Photography programme for 2023.
"In 1995 a group of prominent New Zealand art photographers ventured to the remote wilderness of Tamatea / Dusky Sound in Fiordland to encounter this mythical region and record their experience. Tamatea / Dusky Sound represents a key point of origin in the emergence of Pākehā art history, where the first oil paintings were made in Aotearoa by William Hodges aboard The Resolution on Captain James Cook’s second voyage. Hodges’ paintings evidence the arrival of European vision in New Zealand, including the colonial representation of Māori, while in contrast, also recording this unique natural environment and its characteristic shifting light in a relatively faithful way.
"Centuries later, Mark Adams, Darren Glass, Ian Macdonald and Haru Sameshima – along with historian, anthropologist and prominent Cook voyage scholar Professor Nicholas Thomas – chartered a boat to Dusky Sound in an ambitious expedition to retrace Cook and Hodges’ voyage and their pioneering representations of ‘first contact’ with Aotearoa. Generating diverse contemporary images and reflections of their own, in this exhibition the artists’ work captured during their remarkable journey has been brought together for the first time."
"In this exhibition, there is a sense of collective return, from long exposures capturing the movement of Tamatea’s wind, rain and tides, to the act of revisiting and photographing sites where historic events and representations have occurred. These photographs are teeming with life – they hum with the weather, and reflect on moments spent looking and thinking from many viewpoints, telescoping the past and present."
Read the full exhibition essay by Emil McAvoy here.
Tamatea - Dusky Sound 1995 is part of Auckland Festival of Photography programme for 2023.
"In 1995 a group of prominent New Zealand art photographers ventured to the remote wilderness of Tamatea / Dusky Sound in Fiordland to encounter this mythical region and record their experience. Tamatea / Dusky Sound represents a key point of origin in the emergence of Pākehā art history, where the first oil paintings were made in Aotearoa by William Hodges aboard The Resolution on Captain James Cook’s second voyage. Hodges’ paintings evidence the arrival of European vision in New Zealand, including the colonial representation of Māori, while in contrast, also recording this unique natural environment and its characteristic shifting light in a relatively faithful way.
"Centuries later, Mark Adams, Darren Glass, Ian Macdonald and Haru Sameshima – along with historian, anthropologist and prominent Cook voyage scholar Professor Nicholas Thomas – chartered a boat to Dusky Sound in an ambitious expedition to retrace Cook and Hodges’ voyage and their pioneering representations of ‘first contact’ with Aotearoa. Generating diverse contemporary images and reflections of their own, in this exhibition the artists’ work captured during their remarkable journey has been brought together for the first time."
"In this exhibition, there is a sense of collective return, from long exposures capturing the movement of Tamatea’s wind, rain and tides, to the act of revisiting and photographing sites where historic events and representations have occurred. These photographs are teeming with life – they hum with the weather, and reflect on moments spent looking and thinking from many viewpoints, telescoping the past and present."
Read the full exhibition essay by Emil McAvoy here.
