Past Exhibition

Miranda Bellamy has co-opted the seductive vernacular, decadence and high production values found in advertising for her photographic series 99 Ways to Solve Global Warming . She uses this style to introduce an ambivalent questioning of posited market-driven solutions to climate change. Her large, lush and detailed photographs draw attention to the inherent social and human factors at work with this issue that is often described in scientific terms.

The play between each image resists a straight narrative reading and denies any kind of dogmatic assertion about which is the 'best' way forward. Bellamy has instead formed images of problems bearing potential solutions and solutions wound up in problems. Using old and slow photographic technology Bellamy, through her very methodology and approach, advocates slowing down and taking time to look at every detail and exploring old and forgotten processes for new potential.

Presented alongside Juan James Sydney Simon Papillon et Merci et au Revoir and Liz Rowe Never Too Careful . In these shows the artists confront us with contemporary social and environmental problems and the barriers to change that continue to exist. Their works stand as a challenge to revise set patterns of thinking and doing and a provocation to look for solutions at a personal level.

Blue Oyster Discussion Session 15 & 16: Tuesday 16 and Thursday 18 Nov, 5:30pm

Tuesday 16 November: "How important is the catalogue space when presenting contemporary art publicly?" We will discuss different approaches we have tried, witnessed or considered and what problems and possibilities they raise. Present to consider this with us will be the artist Kim Pieters and artist and lecturer Ali Bramwell.

"A discourse may poison, surround, encircle, imprison or liberate, heal, nourish, fertilize" -- Luce Irigaray

On Thursday 18 November: Steve Lovett artist and Senior Lecturer at Manukau School of Visual Arts, brought to you by the Otago Polytechnic School of Fine Arts. Lovett will speak about his work and his particular interest in the digital-hand made image, or the way that processes concerned with touch or material engagement can alter the direction of technologically driven image making.