Vital Machinery

Conor Clarke, Selina Ershadi, Janet Lilo, Louise Menzies and Meg Porteous

25 Noema - 25 Pēpuere 2024
25 November – 25 February 2024

Ka tūhuratia e Vital Machinery ngā hononga i ngā mahi a te tokorima ringatoi wāhine o Aotearoa i roto i te hopu whakaahua me ngā ata nekeneke. Hei tēnei whakaaturanga, ka noho te kāmera hei hangarau, hei wāhanga o te tinana me te ara whakaaro anō hoki.

Ka tōia mai e ngā ringatoi o Vital Machinery hītori toi ā-mōhiti, kātahi ka toroa te paunga, te kahawhiri me te pūmau o te ata i te ao matihiko. Mārakerake ana mai te mana taineke me ngā matarua o te kāmera, ā, i whakamahia ērā kia whakaaroarohia tō te wāhine wheako me te mōhiti; te pupuri o wheako whaiaro, o auaha; ā, te tohu o te whakaahua i te hītori o te tāmitanga. Hei whakatere i te ao whatungarau, ka toro te whakaaturanga nei i ngā āhuatanga o te whakaata me te hopu i a tātou anō i taua wā tonu.

I whakaatungia tuatahingia i te 2022 ki Ōtepoti ki Te Whare Whakaatu Toi Tūmatanui o Ōtepoti, ka pau te kotahi tau ka whakahoungia, ka whakaroangia te whakaaturanga nei e taua tira ringatoi tonu mō Te Whare Toi o Heretaunga, ka mutu, he toi hou, he tono toi kua āpitihia.

He mea rauhī e Sophie Davis rāua ko Lucy Hammonds

Vital Machinery explores intersections in the practices of five Aotearoa women artists working across photography and moving image. In this exhibition, the camera has been engaged as a technology and an extension of the body and thought process.

The artists in Vital Machinery draw on the history of lens-based art practices and interrogate the consumption, agency, and stability of the image in a digital age. Ever-present are the power dynamics and ambiguities of the camera, which are exploited to consider women’s experiences of the lens; the entanglement of lived experience and creative practice; and the implications of image capture within histories of colonisation. Navigating the networked world, this exhibition reaches inside the mechanisms at play in the processes of representing and recording ourselves within the contemporary moment.

First presented in late 2022 in Ōtepoti at Dunedin Public Art Gallery, the exhibition has been revisited and extended with same group of artists a year later for Te Whare Toi o Heretaunga-Hastings Art Gallery, and includes new and commissioned works.

Curated by Sophie Davis and Lucy Hammonds