Fragments of a World

Fragments of a World
Curated by Dr Sandy Callister

20 January – 20 February 2016
Preview 20 January 6-8pm

Michael Lett is pleased to present Fragments of a World, an exhibtion first shown at Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Wellington, curated by Dr Sandy Callister. This critical exhibition brings together a selection of film and photography by Janet Bayly, Minerva Betts, Rhondda Bosworth, Jane Campion, Alexis Hunter, Joanna Margaret Paul and Popular Productions produced between 1973 and 1987.

The exhibition borrows its title from a book published in 1976 that surveyed the emerging contemporary art medium of photography and took a gendered approach to its subject through the work of 31 New Zealand women artists. The exhibition examines a particular form of imagemaking that opens up thinking about the intersection of feminism, new technologies, and a disruptive epoch.

All selected artists demonstrate their embrace of and struggle with established conventions and hierarchies in the art, film and photographic worlds. Employing strategies such as staging, repetition, reconstruction, assemblage and blurring, they test new technologies, slipping between categories to reframe everyday experiences with disruptive purpose, yet avoiding overt politics. Experimenting with the new media of their time, these artists foreshadow how technologies now mediate our desires and inner thoughts; they are eloquent harbingers of our Instagram era.

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