‘Histories’ Statement
February 2004
Photography tells stories, sometimes true, sometimes fictitious. The nature of the medium suggests objective realism, a truth in the image. However, photography permits bias & prejudice. It allows us to create lies. This work draws on this contradiction to present a series of images which purport to be about the artist.
#1 Ngahere Street, 12-08-1987 (diptych)
#2 Middle Lane, 25-05-1998 (diptych)
#3 Wright Street, 16-10-2003 (diptych)
All works are archival inkjet prints
Work Text
Ngahere Street, 12/8/1987
So this is the beginning of the story of my life. But I’m debating what needs to be included. A lot of it is probably just trivia.
As far as I am aware the major turning points in my life have happened in the last ten years or so, but does that make what went before less relevant, or was it just setting me up for the events which followed? Is there such a thing as fate? As pre-determinants? Were there any turning points in my early years? Can you differentiate them, or those at any stage of your life, from growing up/maturing?
I am also unsure as to the purpose of this exercise. Certainly it is for my own benefit, and presumably it needs to be more than mere factual recall. This means we throw ‘benefit of hindsight’ and ‘analysis’ into the mix, which means we will inevitably relate everything to our current situation, which is not necessarily a good thing as I have changed and so will my current situation. I guess this then will be a snapshot.
appropriated text
Middle Lane, 25/5/1998
If we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art are perhaps a little to blame, for in them we find the same process of simplification or selection at work as in the imagination. Artistic accounts involve severe abbreviations of what reality will force upon us.
The anticipatory and artistic imaginations omit and compress, they cut away the periods of boredom and direct our attention to critical moments and, without either lying or embellishing, thus lend to life a vividness and a coherence that it may lack in the distracting woolliness of the present.
appropriated text
Wright Street, 16/10/2003
I want to start a new life with my valuable hunting knife. She will shine like a new girl and I want to shout out our love to the world. Hit it!
Days they will turn into nights, but my valuable hunting knife, it will not rust through the tears and it will not lose its appeal over years. Come on!
Everything I think about I think about. Everything I talk about I talk about with you. But you don't know what I go through. You don't know. I'll never know. And then I will run. And then I will hide. And then I will run. And then I will hide. I'll never know.
appropriated text
