Upcoming Exhibition

Artist Statement:
In the late 1980s a small team was tasked with removing the Taiaroa Fog Signal, perched precariously on the cliffs of Taiaroa Heads, from its housing. Photographs of the large compressed air tank being hauled onto the back of a truck — set for its new home at the Taieri Historical Museum and Park, out of sight of any large body of water — are the only known documentation of the foghorn’s decommissioning. Although still in working order, the re-sited foghorn is now redundant as a coastal safety technology. Yet, even in this ostensible obsolescence, it accumulates new meanings as a symbol through which to consider the conditions and limits of communication.

In her novel The Foghorn’s Lament (2021), Jennifer Lucy Allan describes how fog signals rely on acts of listening rather than sight, operating through uncertainty and distance. Their function assumes multiple points of reception, an unknown audience, and no guarantee of being heard or understood. In this sense, the foghorn offers a way to think about who is communicating, to whom, and under what conditions meaning is exchanged or missed. These questions resonate in a contemporary political and media landscape marked by doubt, fragmentation, and competing communication channels. Rather than resolving this uncertainty, A World of Doubt sits with it, proposing doubt itself as a space in which questions, exchange, and attentive listening can still occur. 

Although we are constantly being thrown into waves of doubt and uncertainty, the agency afforded by listening can be a powerful tool to navigate these times. 

Curatorial Statement:
Tohu are signs from te taiao. Sometimes a cloudy day is a tohu pai and sometimes it is not. But either way, it is communication from the world. 

The artworks in A World of Doubt have sprung directly from the research Luke Shaw has undertaken into the history of the foghorn which used to live at Taiaroa Heads. His research-based practice often investigates sound and what can be lost in the space between communicating and being heard.

Every sound I think a foghorn might make echoes intermittently across the gallery space to The Lung, a video work featuring still images Luke has taken at the Taieri Historical Museum and Park. Each time the large sculptural work sonically reaches out, it fills the space with sound - a living, breathing artwork of resonance. This call receives a response but not an audible one, instead the projection light reflects back into the void between the works. Light and sound meet in the center of the gallery space - two avenues of connection intermingling inside our minds as we view the works. 

In the middle of the gallery, One Penny ‘Taiaroa’ Postage Stamp, 1947, One Cent ‘Taiaroa’ Postage Stamp 1967, is placed like an anchorage point. Visually pulling us into the history of the lighthouse and the older methods of communication. In the past, Luke has researched and responded to the histories of outmoded communication. These two beautifully framed stamps are firmly situated inside A World of Doubt while still calling out to Luke’s wider artistic practice. 

So, how do we cut through the fog of communication and noise that surrounds us? Perhaps it is through reaching out, carefully listening and allowing space for connection and intermingling with each other, taking the leap of faith - sending the signal and trusting that someone will return your call.