Lisa Clunie

PhotoForum Member Portfolio, October 2019

Lisa Clunie is a photographer and visual artist who lives and works in Te Tai Tokerau, Aotearoa (NZ). Lisa was awarded a Masters of Philosophy from the Australian National University in 2014 and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Otago Polytechnic in 1996. She exhibits regularly and currently teaches photography, drawing and professional practice at NorthTec in Whangārei. Currently Lisa is working towards an exhibition called wet_land, exploring the cultural, social and ecological histories and perspectives of the Hikurangi wetlands, where she resides.

My photographic practice is largely analogue based. Underpinned by an interest in phenomenology, I consider the nature of being and our complex perceptions of time and space. Communicating the materiality of photography and our experience of time is a recurrent focus to my work - where these ideas are often visualised through abstraction and non-objective photograms. Often exhibited alongside more representational imagery, I try to create a space where the play between abstraction and representation can signal transformative processes at work (both in photography and also in our experience of the world). Intrigued by the similarities between art and science; parallel artistic concerns of mine include the relationship of photography to drawing, and how to communicate some of the experience of wonderment and curiosity that I find in nature and the everyday.

Lisa Clunie, Anatomy of Disarray (scrambling pohuehue), 2019