Kate van der Drift
A photographic artist I admire is New Zealander Kate van der Drift because her photographs have an enduring luminous beauty, and display soft, painterly reflections. I am interested in landscape and van der Drift’s work makes you reflect on the environmental change of landscape. Her subject matter focus is often around the Hauraki Plains region, close to the Coromandel Peninsula, and the township of Thames, a place that I have a childhood connection to.
Figure 2: Van der Drift, Kate. Promontories , 2019, archival pigment print, edition of 5, 1190mm x 850mm.
Figure 3: Van der Drift, Kate. Juncus Pallidus, Horseshoe Bend, 2018, archival pigment print on matte photo rag, edition of 5, 1220mm x 814mm.
Kate van der Drift’s recent photography uses camera-less light-sensitive material within a set time period, on a chosen site. By placing photographic paper (unexposed colour negatives) into a river for weeks, she achieves a mixture of element reactions between chemicals, water, pollution, sediment, organic matter, bacteria and algae.
Her work makes the viewer aware of how this wetland forest ecology has changed due to time, colonisation, farming practices, and industrial uses, e.g., Thames was the most highly industrialised town of its size in New Zealand until recently, because of its gold-mining and forestry.
Van der Drift’s photographs below portray liquid type movement that appeals. The myriad of colours, such as burgundy, blue, purple, and pink resonate, and remind me of the large-scale, poured mixed media paintings (see below) of Australian artist Dale Frank, whom I also greatly admire for his use of colour.
Figure 2: Van der Drift, Kate. Waxing Crescent to Waning Gibbous, September, 37°20’33.4″S 175°30’30.5”E, 2020, C-type photographic handprint on matte Fujifilm Crystal C-type photographic handprint on matte Fujifilm Crystal Archive Paper, edition of 3 + 1AP, 500mm x 400mm.
Figure 2: Van der Drift, Kate. Waning Gibbous to Waxing Gibbous, September 2020 I, 37°17’41.6”S 175°31’35.7″E , 2020, Chromogenic Photograph from 4×5” Negative, edition of 5 + 1AP, 510mm x 400mm.
Figure 2: Frank, Dale. Abatis, 2008, Varnish on Linen, 1600 x 1200 mm, Gow Langsford Gallery, NZ.
Darren Glass
The Pinhole photography of New Zealander Darren Glass yields a soft and mysterious quality. Some images are large in scale, and minimal, and centered inside a disc shape, which in turn, is inserted within a black velvet-looking background. This creates interest, and the viewer is drawn into an inner light-filled circular void. His subject matter often evokes nature, a light-filled moonlit shape of a rainbow or a mountain scape.
Selenium toned contact Pinhole camera on fibre based paper, Anna Miles Gallery.
Figure 2: Glass, Darren. Rainbow #010, 2015, C-type Print, 508 x 609mm, Anna Miles Gallery.
Figure 3: Glass, Darren. Ngauruhoe PM #1, 2011, Contact print on C-type paper, 203 x 254mm, Anna Miles Gallery.
By throwing a frisbee-type invented pinhole camera, Glass has created an interesting style of photography that produces a type of abstracted, almost painterly artwork. Some images shine with a neon-type sculptural light quality. The object or scene Glass has produced (see below) spins with movement, and colour, instead of sitting quietly and still like his above photographs.
C-type print, 510 x 610mm, Anna Miles Gallery.
Figure 2: Glass, Darren. Cosmo Flying Disc photograph, from Belly to the Ground, 2005
C-type print, 510 x 610mm, Anna Miles Gallery.
Figure 3: Glass, Darren. Cosmo Flying Disc photograph, from Belly to the Ground, 2005
C-type print, 510 x 610mm, Anna Miles Gallery.
Figure 1: Glass, Darren. Elliptical Roller, Mangawhai Sandspit, 2005-2015, Contact prints on C-type paper 508 x 609 mm, Anna Miles Gallery.
John Hilliard
John Hilliard, (born 1945, England) is a Conceptual Artist. He started his photography career by capturing images of his ideas and showing them as conceptual installations on chosen sites.
Hilliard was able to show a type of movement within his images. He explored distorting, blurring and manipulating the photographic process and its results, both in black and white, and then in colour.
Hilliard, John. Langdale Fell, Motion Frozen/Frozen Motion, 1979, Conceptual Art, Photograph.
I find his large-scale, mural type photographs (see below) printed on canvas and vinyl, powerful with creative narratives.
Movement Discovery. When I photographed the detail of fungi mushrooms as daylight was rising, I also played with the idea of creating movement. I like how I achieved movement with the mushrooms dissolving into abstraction, leaving a painterly, feathery-type rush of colourful motion.
I also created another image that morning displaying movement, where the subject matter of a house, a power pole and some palm trees deconstructed by breaking apart, and shifting into pieces.
