Wed-Fri 12-6, Sat – Sun 10-4
a palmful of water is a group exhibition by The Handmade Darkroom, curated by Lily Dowd and Belinda Whitta, showcasing sustainable and alternative analogue photography. The kaupapa of this exhibition is centered around the theme of water as a form of connection to place, people, knowledge, memory, and earth.
This exhibition includes the alternative and sustainable photography or filmmaking of photographic artists Virginia Woods-Jack, Chloe Mason, Jonathan Kay, Moana Lee, Jan Larcombe, Samson Dell, Lily Dowd, and Belinda Whitta.
Each artist offers a moment into their practice in collaboration with water, sharing knowledge and experience through the physicality of photography.
Chloe Mason (she/her) recently graduated from Massey University’s College of Creative Arts, she is currently based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. Chloe’s artwork consolidates time spent in both natural environments and the darkroom, where she acknowledges parallels between eco-somatic experience, analog photography and filmmaking. She is currently drawing from new materialist and hydro-feminist theory, to document the ways non-human entities already represent themselves.
Jan Larcombe (she/her) is an emerging artist based in North-West Tasmania. Jan is currently perusing a life-long goal of becoming an artist, she is now studying towards a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Hons) at the University of Tasmania. Her driving passions center around life and place, in which she has investigated cultural, social, and geographical spaces using herself as a vehicle for exploration. Jan’s practice invites conversation about aging, memory, and identity held within human and physical place.
Jonathan Kay (he/him) focuses his artistic practice on blurring the boundaries of art and science to render the unseen and challenge notions of landscape. In the last seven years he has have developed his research area to encompass a methodology of photographic interventions within the landscape that are site specific and responsive. This has evolved from engaging with a framework of scientific ‘fieldwork’, where observation and data collection can provide insights into specific environments. This ‘fieldwork’ is centred around the unique possibilities of the photographic medium and goes beyond the privileged landscape image. Jonathan is a Lecturer, Whiti o Rehua School of Art, Toi Rauwhārangi College of Creative Arts, Massey University.
Moana Lee (she/her) works with plant-based photographic processes in a combination of documentary and fine art genres and has exhibited regularly whilst studying at Ilam School of Fine Arts. Moana’s recent Master of Fine Arts degree encompassed genealogy and ethnobotany tracing human trajectories as a way of exploring what it means to be Tangata Tiriti. Recent exhibitions include Women’s Work at Stoddart Cottage Gallery, Legacy Issues: Lens-based Investigations of Waitaha Canterbury Whenua at Ashburton Art Gallery, and Just Visiting: Postcards from the Motherland at Ilam Campus Gallery.
Samson Dell (they/them) is a photographic artist based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara and is a recent graduate from Massey University’s College of Creative Arts. Samson’s photographic practice is concerned with adding to the enduring visuality of queer life through collaborative image making with their community. These photographs were made as part of an ongoing body of work, celebrating private and intimate moments of queerness, and exploring the limitations of representation of diverse community.
Virginia Woods-Jack (she/her) is a British-born photographic artist and curator based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. She holds an MFA with distinction from CoCA Massey. Her work has recently appeared in group shows in which she also co-curated, including Susurrations (2023) at Sanderson Contemporary (NZ) and Lay of The Land (2020) at Informality Gallery (UK). Virginia’s work was also included in Female in Focus Award winner exhibition (Miami, USA and London UK) and Aotearoa International Art Festival 2022. Her work is held in private collections worldwide. Woods-Jack is the founder and curator of Women in Photography NZ & AU, an Instagram platform that facilitates take-overs by female identifying and non-binary photographers throughout Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia.
Belinda Whitta (she/they) is a photographic artist, with a sustainable and alternative analog practice. Frequently working within the intersectionality of feminisms, (mis/dis)representation of land and body, and our contextual settler colonial histories and rituals. Belinda facilitates a hands-on, process-based practice that feels out new ways to communicate the invisibilities or un-seen and un-spoken elements within our relationships, histories, representations, and spaces. Using sustainable photographic processes aids her in maintaining a continuous reciprocal relationship with the landscape, thinking of the land not as an object but an entity. Belinda graduated with a Bachelor of Design with Honours in Photography in 2022, and is currently working towards a Masters in Fine Arts at Whiti o Rehua Massey University, due to graduate in 2024.
Lily Dowd (she/her) is a photographic artist based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. She works primarily in the analogue field of photography, and camera-less techniques. Recently graduating with a MFA at Whiti o Rehua Massey University, her practice gravitates to ideas of personal memory and how this is shown through the ephemerality within photography. In using camera-less techniques, there becomes an organic connection to the lived experience captured directly and abstractly on the surface of light sensitive materials. Often left fugitive, Lily and her photos move in front of one another, marking, exposing, aging, changing and disappearing.
