Anthony McKee’s 1993 photograph Summit Woolspinners featuring worker Ivan Emerson is part of the “Mahi, Toi” exhibition which opens tomorrow at the Forrester Gallery and Mahika Kai Mahika Toi. A former Oamaru Mail photographer, McKee’s photos originally appeared in gallery exhibition “The Oamaru Male” in 1994, covering a range of occupations and subjects, including Chinese market gardeners, stonemasons and workers at Gillies Foundry. The exhibition, which explored the relationship between “art in work and work in art”, would run until December 6. “Drawing on the dual meaning embedded in the title — mahi [work] and toi [art] — it considers how creativity and labour are integrated by exploring themes of extraction, effort, maintenance, repetition and care,” curator Anna McLean said. Paula Collier’s work Forming Paper, also part of the exhibition, features paper printouts with chemical readings for iron casting from Gillies Foundry by worker Peter MacDonald who still works in the foundry today.
