Exhibition talks at Waitohi, February 2020

Talk by Peter F. Ireland, 2PM Friday 21st Feb.

On Friday 21st February, 2pm in the Library, Waitohi, Whanganui artist, critic and writer Peter F. Ireland will give a talk on John B. Turner's Johnsonville Series photographs. This will be a free event and all are welcome to attend.

The talk will be held in the Library's meeting rooms.

The talk will outline the cultural/social circumstances of this Wellington suburb in the early 1960s to give context to Turner's documentary series, and present some photographic antecedents  - the work of the Burton Brothers in the 19th century and that of Les Cleveland in the 20th, to give but two examples - to show just how pioneering Turner's Johnsonville series was.

Peter Ireland was introduced to the richness of photographic imagery by photographer Jim Payne while studying history at Canterbury University in the later 1960s. Ireland has never been a photographer himself, but has since been a passionate advocate for the medium as a curator and writer. In the 1980s he was inaugural photography curator at both the then National Art Gallery (now Te Papa) and Christchurch's Robert McDougall Art Gallery (now the Christchurch Art Gallery), and during his time has curated photography shows for the National Art Gallery, the National Library, the Sarjeant Gallery in Whanganui and the Tairawhiti Museum in Gisborne, among others. His writing has appeared in the NZ Listener, Landfall, the former NZ Journal of Photography, Art New Zealand and PhotoForum magazine, and more recently on the EyeContact website. At present he is preparing a book on photographic portraiture and NZ from the 1840s to 2020, due to appear through Rim Books in July/August 2021.

Peter Ireland. (photo cropped in from original of Peter F. Ireland by Kate Martin at the Russell Museum, July 2018)

Talk by John B. Turner

Saturday 15th February, 1.30pm - John B. Turner is visiting Wellington from Beijing and will be giving a talk about the photography in Waitohi. This is a free event and all are welcome to attend.

Content and Form: photographs as visual evidence 
"While these photographs of Johnsonville were deliberately made as an historical record for the use of future generations, not least because there was virtually no audience to appreciate or value them at the time, they also embody the personal, autobiographical signature of the photographer.  This floor talk, interacting with the audience, will discuss some of the ins and outs of content (subject matter), form (artistic value) and meaning (their changing use value) for us half a century later."
The talk will take 35-40 minutes and there will be time for questions after.

We will also be running a weekend workshop on documentary photography. There is no charge for attending the workshop. More info.

John B. Turner speaking at Photospace Gallery, 2019. Photo: J. Gilberd