Latest news with #AnneNoble
Scoop
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Scoop
Photography As Relevant And Popular As It Was 50 Years Ago
Press Release – Massey University Massey University is celebrating the 50-year anniversary with an exhibition of images provided by over 100 alumni, former and current photography teaching staff. The exhibition is being held in the Engine Room at Masseys Wellington campus from Tuesday 22 … The art of analogue photography, darkroom processing and developing prints is in high demand 50 years after the tertiary photography course was first offered to Wellington students in 1975. Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa Massey University opened its new state of the art 18 booth darkroom in the former Dominion Museum building last week, alongside a suite of other photographic resources including lighting studios, film scanners, digital print and alternative process facilities. This semester, more than 70 students are enrolled in the first year Introduction to Darkroom course at Massey's Toi Rauwhārangi College of Creative Arts. Photography Major Coordinator Shaun Waugh says as the country's longest-running photography programme, the course is as relevant as it was at its outset. 'Our programme continues to shape generations of image-makers, researchers and cultural commentators who explore how we see and interpret the world around us.' Analogue(n.) exhibition opens today Massey University is celebrating the 50-year anniversary with an exhibition of images provided by over 100 alumni, former and current photography teaching staff. The exhibition is being held in the Engine Room at Massey's Wellington campus from Tuesday 22 July to Saturday August 9. The exhibition features images from photographers who are spread all over Aotearoa New Zealand and the world including Professor Emerita (fine arts) Anne Noble, David Cook, Wayne Barrar, Ann Shelton, Gavin Hipkins, and the founder of the original photography course, William Main. Renowned photographer Peter Black was one of the students in the very first photography course offered by the then Wellington Polytechnic in 1975. He remembers using photographs from a roll of black and white film developed from his first camera (a Pentax spotmatic) to support his application. Just seven years later his Fifty Photographsshow (1982) was the first one-person show of photography at the National Art Gallery. Mr Black chose a colour image he took in 1984, Woman with Lizard for the exhibition. Senior lecturer Shaun Waugh says it's ironic that in the same year that Massey's photography course began, Kodak built the first CCD-based digital still camera—a toaster-sized device capturing just 0.01 megapixels. 'This technological coincidence underscores a key tension explored in the exhibition: between the mechanical past and the computational future of photography, and the enduring value of analogue ways of seeing and making,' he adds. Photography is available as a major within the Bachelor of Design (BDes) at Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa Massey University. Students can complete a three-year BDes, four-year BDes (Hons) degree, a Masters in Fine Arts, Masters in Design or PhD with a focus in Photography.
Scoop
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Scoop
Photography As Relevant And Popular As It Was 50 Years Ago
The art of analogue photography, darkroom processing and developing prints is in high demand 50 years after the tertiary photography course was first offered to Wellington students in 1975. Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa Massey University opened its new state of the art 18 booth darkroom in the former Dominion Museum building last week, alongside a suite of other photographic resources including lighting studios, film scanners, digital print and alternative process facilities. This semester, more than 70 students are enrolled in the first year Introduction to Darkroom course at Massey's Toi Rauwhārangi College of Creative Arts. Photography Major Coordinator Shaun Waugh says as the country's longest-running photography programme, the course is as relevant as it was at its outset. 'Our programme continues to shape generations of image-makers, researchers and cultural commentators who explore how we see and interpret the world around us.' Analogue(n.) exhibition opens today Massey University is celebrating the 50-year anniversary with an exhibition of images provided by over 100 alumni, former and current photography teaching staff. The exhibition is being held in the Engine Room at Massey's Wellington campus from Tuesday 22 July to Saturday August 9. The exhibition features images from photographers who are spread all over Aotearoa New Zealand and the world including Professor Emerita (fine arts) Anne Noble, David Cook, Wayne Barrar, Ann Shelton, Gavin Hipkins, and the founder of the original photography course, William Main. Renowned photographer Peter Black was one of the students in the very first photography course offered by the then Wellington Polytechnic in 1975. He remembers using photographs from a roll of black and white film developed from his first camera (a Pentax spotmatic) to support his application. Just seven years later his Fifty Photographsshow (1982) was the first one-person show of photography at the National Art Gallery. Mr Black chose a colour image he took in 1984, Woman with Lizard for the exhibition. Senior lecturer Shaun Waugh says it's ironic that in the same year that Massey's photography course began, Kodak built the first CCD-based digital still camera—a toaster-sized device capturing just 0.01 megapixels. 'This technological coincidence underscores a key tension explored in the exhibition: between the mechanical past and the computational future of photography, and the enduring value of analogue ways of seeing and making,' he adds. Photography is available as a major within the Bachelor of Design (BDes) at Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa Massey University. Students can complete a three-year BDes, four-year BDes (Hons) degree, a Masters in Fine Arts, Masters in Design or PhD with a focus in Photography.
Otago Daily Times
25-06-2025
- General
- Otago Daily Times
Art seen . . .
"Unutai e! Unutai e!", Kāi Tahu and Anne Noble (Dunedin Public Art Gallery) The term "takata whenua" is not mere words. It expresses the connection Māori have with the land. They are kaitiaki, the guardians of the rivers, the hills, and the forests. The link is made clear in everything from formal pepeha introductions to the name of the royal marae, Turangawaewae ("a place to stand"). This guardianship is the basis of an exhibition by Anne Noble in association with Kāi Tahu. The display examines the desecration of the rivers by industrial practice and the need to say "Stop — no more". Noble's photographs form short series taken at different locales, each accompanied by an essay by a local elder or academic. Each series features a photograph of the essayist, alongside images of the damage which has been wrought. The display features Kāi Tahu rohe throughout Te Waipounamu, and even some regions of Te Ika-a-Māui. A case of historical documents also shows the ease with which early settlers were able to take and misuse these rivers. The overall display is thought-provoking and at times heartbreaking. We see farmlands that were once the Taiari's (Taieri's) Lake Tatawai, effluent-green rivers flowing into Ellesmere/Te Waihora, and the churning brown waters below Mataura's industrial works. This powerful exhibition should be a wake-up call to all concerned about our taoka. "Sculptures for a Wilderness", BenPearce (Milford Gallery) The fragility of the environment is also one of the inspirations for Ben Pearce's massive sculptures, on display at Milford Gallery. Created from corten steel — a durable metal designed to patinate without losing strength — the sculptures are designed to resemble a series of boulders cascading into approximately human form. Weathered lines of rust fall from the steel like frozen waterfalls, the forms shifting as viewers walk round them to become ambiguous shapes, part human and part geological. The sculptures become architectonic structures, each with its own personality, each boulder forming one of the bones of a giant spine. The pieces become simultaneously totems, spirit-imbued markers on the land, and also impassive guardians. This double personality is designed to intimate our own role on the planet. Humans are guardians of the environment, while simultaneously being part of it. The lines between watcher and watched shift, as do our own views on human existence. Two of Pearce's works are more experimental, with angular forms resembling the rusted remains of early industrial machinery. There is a hint here that humans are not the end of the evolutionary process but simply a means towards that end, and that if we cannot control our environment, that work may yet be left to our own creations, machines. "There is Almost Nothing Left of Nowhere", Robert P. West (Moray Gallery) Robert P. West looks at our relationship with the environment in a different way. Modern society is one of constant bombardment. Music, noise, light, uniformity, and most of all information, is thrust at us 24/7. There is no opportunity to escape the constant hubbub. There is no "away" to get to, where we can be to hear our own inner self. The Buddhist view of the impossibility of doing nothing is more true now than ever. Yet this "away", this "nowhere", is a necessity in order for us to heal, to reflect, and to let the juices of creativity flow. In West's exhibition, the artist attempts to express this struggle to find the void in a series of Miro-esque abstracts. Though dominated by rigid geometric forms, these pieces are deliberately slightly askew, as if attempts at conformity have not been successful. The backgrounds of the works — unusually for West — are not regular but are heavily hatched and scumbled, all to good effect. The artist is expressing individuality within the confines of what could be suprematist order, as if to remind the viewer the choice is theirs whether to accept the noise around them or to break out and find their own inner peace and individuality. — James Dignan
Otago Daily Times
28-05-2025
- General
- Otago Daily Times
Exposing the truth of the beautiful green
Twenty-five years after a mid-career retrospective exhibition at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, leading New Zealand photographer Anne Noble returns with a collaborative exhibition depicting the degraded state of fresh water across Kāi Tahu tribal lands. She talks to Rebecca Fox about the role photography can have in public discourse. The signs say it all, 40 of them lined up precisely on a wall - ''warning toxic algae'', ''anglers and picnickers beware'', ''water may contain pollutants'' repeated over and over. Each one has been photographed by leading contemporary photographer Anne Noble as she journeyed around Canterbury and Southland with members of Kāi Tahu to capture the state of waterways, past and present, on Kāi Tahu tribal lands. No stranger to following the journey of rivers - Noble first came to national recognition for her work on the Whanganui River in the 1980s - she was engaged by Te Kura Taka Pini to create an extensive photographic archive of the waterways illustrating not only the devastation of waterways but also the resilience of whānau, hapū, and iwi striving to restore wai Māori, uphold rakatirataka, and protect mahika kai practices. The photos were used to support Kāi Tahu's statement of claim before the High Court in Christchurch seeking recognition of Kāi Tahu rakatirataka (authority) over wai Māori, fresh water, within their takiwā (area). ''Rivers are in my blood. The Whanganui project was a very personal story but that's a lifetime away. Today I'm much more interested in the politics of our relationship to water. There is a conflict between seeing and using rivers as an economic resource and how this impacts on rivers as living entities that are not separate from human and cultural needs and relationships. My hope is that this exhibition can provide a means to think about these things.'' It was important for Noble to clarify her role in the project as a non mana whenua contributor before she took up the project but she believes photography is a good medium to connect people to places they all inhabit, particularly those affected by various forces of degradation such as the increasing impacts on our waterways of intensive agriculture, forestry, and especially the intensification of dairy, in the South, in Canterbury and Southland. ''Photography is a great medium to insert itself into public discourse. If what the Ngai Tahu claim is wanting to establish is rakatirataka and partnership in managing the health and wellbeing of our waterways, then representation of the impacts of degradation and the impacts on people and their relationships to water is telling everybody's story. So we've worked together on a project that is supporting the Ngāi Tahu Statement of Claim - but it is also a story about water for all of us.''But she is quick to point out, this is not her story to tell. ''So, I've been there, [with] the privilege of seeing with people - through their eyes as it were - to bring something into the public domain. It is important to me that the stories that accompany the photographs are not mine.'' She has done so in her own way with ''Unutai e! Unutai e!'' at Dunedin Public Art Gallery by providing the photographs, while members of Kāi Tahu, who were plaintiffs in the High Court case, do the talking through their portraits and their stories of waterway degradation. For Noble it has highlighted how images of the landscape can often hide a lie. ''People will drive through New Zealand and they'll see the endless beautiful green. Underpinning the green is another story. The landscapes in this exhibition tell a different story. Yes, and it is not a pretty one.'' Close-ups of algae blooms and pivot irrigators contrast with aerial views of river and estuary mouths running green. ''These show degradation of water at what are often long-standing traditional mahinga kai sites. So these images point to the impact on mahinga kai customs and practices. All over Canterbury, all over Southland, you can see giant pivot irrigators. Reshaping the landscape. It's all about turning it green. ''And yet the impact of over-abstraction of water is something that you see evidence of when you visit the estuaries. And there's not enough flow in the river to turn the stones and clean the river.'' A portrait of Upoko o Kāi Te Ruahikihiki ki Ōtākou Edward Ellison sits beside one of a dry, empty paddock - what was Lake Tatawai, 24 hectares of water where the people who lived at the Māori Kāik (Maitapapa) and Ōtākou settlements would have sought out moulting ducks, īnaka (whitebait) and tuna (eels). ''You're up to your knees in mud these days, whereas back in the day you could see to the bottom through clear columns of water to gravelly lake and riverbeds,'' he says in the exhibition label. She created a collection of signs warning of toxic algae blooms and polluted waters and hung many of them together on one wall. Many were in traditional mahina kai sites. ''This collection of 40 signs is my idea of a landscape. Each of them is a beautiful little individual landscape that just happens to have a toxic water warning sign in the middle of it. All together they are a jolting reminder of what we are doing to our environment.'' It is her intention for the exhibition to offer an opportunity to stop, encounter the people, the places and, most importantly, the issues that underpin the Ngai Tahu claim for rakatiraka over wai Māori. ''Bring your attention really to things that are overlooked or not seen. The artistry or the concept is to make something that's inherently ugly incredibly beautiful. And in your then experience of something that is beautiful, yet toxic, is a state of confusion that amplifies something.'' She points to a close-up image of water flowing over rocks. Look closer and you can see algae growth. ''That would kill your dog.'' ''The role of art is to unsettle and to challenge as well as to uplift. And beauty can be very unsettling. If you look closely at some of these pictures - they are beautiful - but they are of very ugly things. When you've been conned, really, by beauty - then you have to go away and think about it, especially when you realise the reality being presented is not beautiful at all.'' Look at Lake Ellesmere (Te Waihora), Noble, who has an Arts Foundation Laureate Award and a New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to photography, says. ''It's a famous lake, very important to Ngāi Tahu. What is shown here are the state of three of the many rivers that flow into Te Waihora that all run through intensive dairy country. This lake is ranked as one of the worst in the world in terms of the state of its water.'' Another photograph shows a person lifting a whitebait net out of the river, basically covered in liquid cow manure. Given the impact for Kāi Tahu on mahinga kai customs and practices, Noble has given species such as tuna and inanga status and mana by creating ''portraits'' of them. Alongside are some ''little stories'' of the science being done to protect species such as a tuna monitoring project at Lake Whakatipu which is trying to understand the impacts on the important traditional food source. It seemed fitting for portraits of tuna that are abstract and ambiguous to end the exhibition, she says. Being able to amplify the surfaces of the tuna and turn them into a kind of ''magic moment'' is something only photography can do. ''Their skins are glorious, they're beautifully slithery, but it's like light and flashes of light in the water and it's just turning that into something a little more abstract.'' Some of the waterway images have been taken on a drone - a first and ''great adventure'' for Noble, who was excited by the ability it gave her to capture the water from a height even if she was petrified she was going to crash it. ''You get a sense of kind of the scale of things. And when light catches water from above you can see the world in the way that you can't as a short person with feet on the ground.'' She is happy to use any tool ''that is the right tool'' to capture the image she is after. Some images take hours to capture and others she does not know she has captured until she develops them. ''Photographs can be magical accidents. Sometimes you find you have much more in an image than what you actually saw at the time. And then when you recognise that you try and make sense of it and make sure that magic is there for others to find in the picture that you've created.'' The project also came along as Noble retired from teaching photography at Massey University College of Creative Arts, Toi Rauwharangi giving her the opportunity to focus full-time on her own work. ''I'm not afraid of big projects.'' The archive is a continuation of Noble's interest in environmental issues from her Antarctic series, mostly developed between 2001 and 2014, to her more recent work In the company of bees and her ongoing project In a Forest Dark . TO SEE ''Unutai e! Unutai e!'', Kāi Tahu & Anne Noble, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Saturday, May 31. 10.30am: Panel Discussion: Ki Uta Ki Tai: What is the future for our wai? 1pm: Exhibition Tour: Join Ōtākou whānau, Te Kura Taka Pini, and members of the Unutai e! Unutai e! working group on a tour of the exhibition 2.30pm: Performance: He Waka Kōtuia
