a line between two trees

a line between two trees

Anne Noble

Jonathan Smart Gallery
52 Buchan Street, Sydenham, Christchurch

March 13 - April 14, 2020

Anne Noble’s new exhibition, a line between two trees is a beautiful and considered installation. Noble would have us see in the dark, or into realms beyond the visible, and this is a breath-taking thing. Whether it be day’s last light on a eucalypt, scanning film buried in earth to capture conversation between trees, or just having fun with “shooters” in kauri forest after dark, Noble playfully explores photography’s ability to make visible both time, and that which lies hidden or within. And she does this via photographic language that is seriously poetic, evocative and often abstract.

The artist’s book a line between two trees, Observations from the Critical Zone II with pages laid out open is more than seven metres long. Yet its suggestions are intimate, like an interrogation of pink moss and lichen with black holes of non-communication. In fact, the black registers film emulsion that has been eaten away by the soil’s chemical environment. (Noble having buried the film for 2488 hours.) And the pink is Noble’s scanner balanced for human skin tone in daylight – utterly consistent with Kodak film setting.