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NIGHTSITES ARTIST STATEMENT
I’m
a night sort of guy – always have been and probably always
will be. Now I work in a DARK ROOM as well – come out
of the darkroom and then it’s night: dark dark dark dark
dark… All my spare time is in the dark. So… I drive
around in the dark, I look at everything in the dark…and
I photograph in the dark. It’s very dark out there – but
there’s a lot going on.
The dark is a foreboding place, full of the unknown and possible
danger. Things happen, bad things, there’s often a sense
of incipient violence, looming just beyond your view – all
you can see are the flicker of eyes, as the flash catches them.
There’s no way you can see your way out either, the exit
is obscured – but you can see where others have been.
While I was making my last exhibition, Tiki Tour, I became
quite enamored with the velvety texture of the blacks of
the Epson
inkjet paper. Really it’s been a matter of convenience
and desire that Night Sites has developed the way it has.
Photographing in the dark using flash is like using the night
sky as a black cyclorama - the subject becomes isolated
and stilled, rigid, colours glow. The photographic idiom,
capture,
seems quite
pertinent. Many of the images in Night Sites show objects
that have been captured, locked in cement, chained down,
fenced
in – generally
not going anywhere. It’s curious to me that we are so
keen to cement boats down when they have provided so much mobility
to our cultures.
Night Sites could be summed up as an expression of night
life in Wanganui – a few hairy beasts roaming around, things
going nowhere and the feeling of being cornered. It started
as a garrison town and that spirit remains.
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