Art seen: June 18

Digital Oils, by Nick Austin. (2018-2025). Mixed media, digital video, audio at Dunedin Public Art Gallery. PHOTO: NICK AUSTIN

(Dunedin Public Art Gallery)

“What Did People Do All Day?” by Nick Austin comprises part two of Suite 2026, a Dunedin Public Art Gallery Contemporary Ōtepoti Dunedin Biennial programme that features local artists.

Spanning a series of sculptures from 2010 to 2025, the show is a collection of characteristically witty and considered work. Found object assemblages are a primary mode of making represented in the show, with the Austin’s signature gestures seen in the handwriting in some of the works and a single acrylic on canvas.

Austin’s practice draws on personal and professional life contexts for source material and subject matter, presenting reflections on local histories and poetic renditions that are, at times, associated with the artist’s family life. Contractions (23 March 2010), for example, is a list of recorded contraction times experienced by Austin’s partner during the labour of the birth their child; the work is now a concrete visual poem that documents a significant life moment.

Pictured here is Digital Oils (2025), a visual and sound piece featuring historic photographs of the wharf precinct of Ōtepoti with white gloves used to handle such materials in an archive context. The photographs are sourced from Hocken Collections Uare Taoka o Hākena where Austin works. Ideas about collections and archives and the practices associated with them are also layered across the exhibition.

‘‘A Group Exhibition of Photographic Work’’ (installation view) at Bertha Gallery. PHOTO: SUPPLIED

( Bertha Gallery)

In response to an open call for photographic submissions, PHOTO is a full and dynamic group exhibition, showcasing the work of eighteen local Ōtepoti emerging and established artists. Work by high school students, current art school students and senior photographic practitioners are represented. Following the order of the catalogue of works, contributors include Philip Jarvis, Prudence Edge, Thomas Lord, Rachel Allan, Alan Dove, Emi Sharma, Zenobia Southcombe, Kieran Dodd, Kieran Dooley, Dony Joseph, Piupiu Maya Turei, Marion Mertens, Louis Calder, Shannon Rosenfeldt, Solomon Cloughley, Artemis Jones and Rosa Fyfe.

The exhibition space is partitioned by modular four-sided freestanding wall units with works displayed on all surfaces, allowing some photographers to present works in series. In a diverse set of approaches to digital and analogue photography, the work on show includes examples of mixed media and collage treatments, the skilful handling of technically specialised film, and a range of printing processes, including the cyanotype. The openly thematic nature of the show means a whole range of subject matter and conceptual concerns are in the mix. This viewer enjoyed the discovery process inherent in viewing such a large exhibition and was drawn to technically accomplished aspects of composition making and the varied treatments of light.

OAS Heritage Collection Exhibition: “Looking forward to looking back” (installation view). PHOTO: SUPPLIED

(Otago Art Society)

As part of the Otago Art Society’s 150th anniversary programme, a selection of 40 works has been drawn from their collection for exhibition. The show features artworks of provenance within the collection, providing a general view of the artists and figures integral to the history of the Otago Art Society and a broader local art history of Ōtepoti Dunedin.

Each work is captioned with a small introductory text including any Otago Art Society membership details and the year the work was given to or acquired by the society, for example. A number of the works on display are from past presidents or life members of the society, artists with rich and varied practices, professions and spheres of influence.

Prominent figures include the society’s 1876 founding member and president from 1880–98, William Mathew Hodgkins (1833–98); the influential Shona McFarlane (1929–2001), president in the late 1960s; and treasured works, like Ōtautahi Christchurch based painter Elizabeth Kelly’s (1877–1946) Self-Portrait (1933).

Many of the works will be familiar to regular visitors but some have not been on display for several decades. Pictured here are works by historian Alexander McLintok (1903–68), Barabara Cave (past president, 1980–83), life member Maurice Kerr (1904–2003), John Leslie McIndoe (past president, 1934) and Ralph Miller (1918–56), known for his lively sketches of daily street scenes.