Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery

Fragments of a World: Artists Working in Film and Photography 1973–1987

Janet Bayly

Minerva Betts

Rhondda Bosworth

Jane Campion

Alexis Hunter

Joanna Margaret Paul

Popular Productions

curated by Sandy Callister

19 January – 20 February 2016

Fragments of a World was first staged at Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery in 2015. It brought together a selection of films and photographs by Janet Bayly, Minerva Betts, Rhondda Bosworth, Jane Campion, Alexis Hunter, Joanna Margaret Paul and Popular Productions produced between 1973 and 1987. The exhibition borrowed its title from a book published in 1976 surveying the emerging contemporary art medium of photography, which took a gendered approach to its subject and featured the work of 31 women artists. The aim of the exhibition was to examine a particular form of image making that opens up thinking about the intersection of feminism, new technologies, and a disruptive epoch. The selected artists all 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.

Sandy Callister is an independent curator and writer based in Auckland. She was 2010 Research Scholar at the Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington and has been an Adam Art Gallery Advisory Board Member and Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection Trustee since 2010.

Installation view Fragments of a World: Artists Working in Film and Photography 1973–1987, Michael Lett, Auckland, 2016. Photo: Alex North

Janet Bayly, Self Portrait (Mirror) 2 Self Portrait (Mirror) 3 Self Portrait (Mirror) 4, 1983, three unique Polacolour prints, 254 x 203 mm each. Installation view Fragments of a World: Artists Working in Film and Photography 1973–1987, Michael Lett, Auckland, 2016. Photo: Alex North

Installation view Fragments of a World: Artists Working in Film and Photography 1973–1987, Michael Lett, Auckland, 2016. Photo: Alex North

Minerva Betts, Chair, circa 1980, silver bromide print, framed, 350 x 365 mm. Installation view Fragments of a World: Artists Working in Film and Photography 1973–1987, Michael Lett, Auckland, 2016. Photo: Alex North

Installation view Fragments of a World: Artists Working in Film and Photography 1973–1987, Michael Lett, Auckland, 2016. Photo: Alex North

Joanna Margaret Paul, Untitled (Barry’s Bay), 1976/2013, archival print from original colour negative, 175 x 260 mm. Installation view Fragments of a World: Artists Working in Film and Photography 1973–1987, Michael Lett, Auckland, 2016. Photo: Alex North

Installation view Fragments of a World: Artists Working in Film and Photography 1973–1987, Michael Lett, Auckland, 2016. Photo: Alex North

Alexis Hunter, Approach to Fear V11: Pain-Solace (Hoxton, London) 1975 16 colour photographs, framed. All images courtesy of the artist’s estate. Installation view Fragments of a World: Artists Working in Film and Photography 1973–1987, Michael Lett, Auckland, 2016. Photo: Alex North