Characterised by a combination of science and artistry, photographs are uniquely linked to the time and place of their making. Portraying slivers of time as it appeared to the camera, they are often considered to be documents of some other moment, some other life. The works here reference, and in some cases use, the technologies of an earlier time, but the concerns of these artists are contemporary. They initiate a dialogue with us in the present.

Capacity brings together a selection of works from Ngā Puhipuhi o Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection which reflect on the possibilities of images to hold multiple temporalities. Marie Shannon’s Wrapped Photograph (Julian Dashper, Bedroom at Aachen, 1995) (2012) alongside Bedroom at Aachen (1995) by her late artist husband Julian Dashper dwells in a personal space, imbued with memory, emotion, and connection. The Roto (2010), part of Joyce Campbell and Richard Niania’s ‘Te Taniwha’ series, an ongoing collaborative process which reveals the importance of place in both holding, and releasing, memory and story. Richard Frater’s Not Titled (2017) and Andrew Beck’s Glass Strata (2015) upend present-day expectations of the reproduceable image, presenting unique prints grounded in old technologies. Matt Tini’s sitters I (2022), also a unique print, re-images colonial narrative dominance by foregrounding a queer Māori perspective referencing the political imbalances steeped in the photographic histories of Aotearoa.

Photography is a swiftly evolving medium; it is a foundational technology in this moment of accelerated information proliferation. As material objects, however, the photographic images in Capacity are profoundly quiet and still. There is a lacuna or gap between these two forms of time, something fundamentally untranslatable between still photographic images on walls and slippery scrolling images as they emerge and morph in digital formats on the internet. Capacity suggests that our experience of the photographic image is marked by advances and pauses, constancy and stasis—or as Susan Sontag describes “the way time distends, is consumed.”[1]That is, through these works we might consider an expanded conception of the image, which has the capacity of holding us in a state of contemplation—a form of connection with the past, the present, and the lives of others. Perhaps it is in the viewer’s body and through our present experience of time spent looking at images, that these divergent timelines are brought together.

This exhibition has been curated by Kaiwhakarākei, Curator Collections, Sophie Thorn and Kaiāwhina Nahanaha taonga, Collection Assistant, Camus Wyatt as part of Focus on Photography, a collaboration between the National Library Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi, and Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery, celebrating historic and contemporary photography in Aotearoa. Through a series of exhibitions and events, Focus on Photography highlights the medium’s ability to document, reflect, and transform the way we see the world. Visit focusonphotography.nz for more information.

Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery is the university art gallery of Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. You can find us at the Kelburn Campus in the dramatic building designed by Sir Ian Athfield, where we have been running a programme of exhibitions and events since 1999. The Gallery is free and open to the public Tuesday–Sunday, 11am–5pm. The Gallery manages Ngā Puhipuhi o Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection, the 600-strong collection of artworks built since the 1940s to enhance the public spaces of the University.

[1]Susan Sontag, "Walser's Voice", 1982, foreword to Selected Stories by Robert Walser, trans. Christopher Middleton (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), viii.