Photographer Takes Artwork Out of The Frame

For immediate release, May 28, 2007

Wellington Photographer Takes Artwork Out of The Frame

Adrienne Martyn’s new exhibition is an exploration of the setting and installation of an art exhibition rather than the artworks themselves. In Looking at the Subject, June 2-July 1 at the Michael Hirschfeld Gallery, Martyn questions the influence that devices used by museums and galleries have on an audience’s viewing experience.

Martyn’s fourteen immaculate black and white prints were taken during 1990 and 2005 as part of an ongoing project examining art galleries around the world. The three galleries featured in these prints are The Louvre in Paris, The Auckland Art Gallery and The New Gallery in Auckland. However, in 13 of the 14 prints, the artworks themselves have been digitally removed from the images leaving unsettling black voids.

Without the distraction of the works to consider, the viewers therefore focus on the framing devices, and other influences used by the galleries, rather than on the artworks themselves. They will also see a chronology of style in the framing and setting of the photographed exhibitions, from the ornate dark walls and elaborate frames of the Renaissance period to the minimal presentation of the late 20th century.

Biography: Adrienne Martyn was born in Wellington in 1950 and lives here still. In 2006 she received a Masters of Fine Arts with First Class Honours from Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland. Martyn has had several solo exhibitions including ‘Adrienne Martyn: Portraits – A Survey 1979-87’, mounted and toured by the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, 1988; ‘Through Time’, Artspace, Auckland, 1990 and ‘Lake’, Waikato Museum of Art and History, 2001 and appeared in group exhibitions: ‘New Light’, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney, 1983; ‘Women Photograph Women’, Munich Institute, Germany, 1986 and ‘New Sights New Sites’, Te Papa Tongarewa, Museum of New Zealand, 2001. She was the inaugural Samuel Marsden Artist in Residence, 1999 and Artist in Residence at Waikato Museum in 2000.

Image: Louvre (1) 1990-2005, Adrienne Martyn, Ultrachrome ink on watercolour paper mounted and framed, 820 x 680cmCourtesy of the artist

ENDS

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