City Lights, Comet Projectspace, Auckland Art Week Satellite Exhibition
6-7 and 13-14 October 2018
Roma Anderson, Ethan Coombridge, Wendy Leach, Alane Sue Paterson, Karen Sewell, Lara Thomas, Lily Worrall
Curated by: Bobbie Gray and Alicia Taylor
Photos by: Chelsea Bauer and Pip Stephens
Skylight is the manifestation of light, abstracted and separated into three spectrum’s of understanding, representative of the past, present and future of the Tāmaki river. The processing of hundreds of analogue polaroids entails and therefore speaks to a greater entropy. A process of digital decay that parallels the environmental and colonial decay, caused by the violence that has historically plagued the Tāmaki river and its surrounds at the hands of settlers, encroaching urbanisation, and pollution. The shifting images act as portals to the soul of the river, they are frameworks to restrain the river within history, or boundaries to be broken and eclipsed by its agency, vitality, and power.
Anderson’s own perspective is integral to this work, having grown up and resided at several different points along the waterway, she has become a conduit for the agency of this environment. Her deconstruction of how the Tāmaki River is framed and valued, both aesthetically and politically, is an active protest of the marginalisation of New Zealand’s waterways. By creating striking imagery that writhes across the screen, Anderson has developed a complex devotion to an issue that cannot be ignored.
Skylight, Roma Anderson, three-channel moving image installation on lcd screen televisions, seven minute duration (looped), 2019
Left-Right: Future, Past and Present
