Matters of Time

Mickey Smith

Sanderson Contemporary Art

15 September – 11 October, 2020

Reviewed by Andrew Clark for PhotoForum, 01 October 2020

(Mickey Smith, Kia ora and Tall Poppies)

In Matters of Time, Mickey Smith presents a group of immaculate archival prints from digital photographs, depicting the spines of bound periodical volumes found in libraries, both In New Zealand and overseas. This presentation of the work is refreshing and immediately appealing, especially coming on the tail end of a locked-down existence. There is a simple pleasure to being in the presence of large-scale photographic prints, a reminder of the physicality of the medium when it is divorced from the small screens through which it is usually experienced in contemporary life.

Smith’s decision to shoot these books against a black background in shallow focus pulls their physicality and materiality to the fore, allowing the viewer to inspect every scuff, tear and stain, and to revel in the fine texture of their cloth-bound covers and embossed titles. These works unashamedly evoke the tactile pleasures of the library, such as the subtle friction when hardbacked volumes are pulled from a shelf, and the smells of dust, paper and glue that gradually leach from the books as they age. Smith’s interest in the library as a site of poetic, as well as cultural, significance is apparent, as is her fondness for the aesthetics of the bookshelf. In 2018, the artist published through Te Tuhi her book As You Will: Carnegie Libraries of the South Pacific (1), documenting the fates of these institutions a century after their construction. The status of libraries as repositories of knowledge and cultural capital is increasingly being contested, as their functionality is usurped by digital resources and databases. For Aucklanders, Smith’s engagement with the discourse around the library space feels particularly timely, given Auckland University’s recent decision to close their specialist fine arts and architecture libraries.

(Mickey Smith, Endeavour and Point)

Formally, the works are composed of abutting planes of subtly varied colour, inviting comparisons to painting that further suggests a concern with physicality and volume (in both senses of the word, perhaps). However, their primary feature is the inclusion of text, in the form of the titles of the periodicals themselves. These add a layer of commentary, such as the dishevelled, fraying volume depicted in TIME (presumably containing bound copies of Time magazine), or the endearingly creased covers of Who’s Who in New Zealand, hand labelled with the years 1961, 1964 and 1968. This work, Who’s Who, points explicitly towards the gulf between the idea of binding paper periodicals for library use and the contemporary digital media environment. As they recede into obsolescence, these objects become more and more fetishized in the collective cultural memory, totems of a past when information moved slowly and deliberately.

Several of the works explicitly point towards New Zealand, such as KIA ORA, Tall Poppies and Collocation No. 17 (OCEANIA). These works invite the viewer to meditate on the role played by cultural institutions in solidifying the ephemeral, organic substance of national identity into a form suitable for publication and distribution, and perhaps to ask what relation these dusty volumes might bear to the lived reality of Aotearoa in 2020.

In ENDEAVOUR, the Americanised spelling of the word has been scrubbed from the binding of one volume and replaced with the Commonwealth form, perhaps a comment on Smith’s own American nationality. This small mistake, immortalised in the form of a bound library volume, offers a kind of microcosmic glimpse into the life of the librarian or book binder who prepared and labelled this volume, imparting a strangely intimate quality to the seemingly anonymous object. There is a personal quality to these objects; they sit in a liminal space between the disposable magazine and the stolid, monumental book, fixing ephemerality into permanence.

A subsection of the tomes photographed have hand-written titles, their textual styles seeming to comment on their contents; in Rip It Up, the music magazine’s title is casually printed across the spines of three volumes, aligned differently on each, while in Point the single word, in block capitals, becomes a bold declaration—although of what, exactly, remains unclear. Isolated by the photograph’s frame, these found texts become quixotic, faintly humorous slogans, their handwritten, colloquial quality likely to recall to New Zealand viewers the work of John Reynolds.

In choosing this subject matter and presentation, Smith is herself creating a kind of catalogue or archive, reflecting the structure of the library site as a hierarchical, organised system. Libraries are both physical structures and constructions of knowledge, externalising and making concrete the epistemologies they contain. Systematic, serial documentation is a methodology with deep roots in photographic practice, from the immense catalogue of German professions and trades compiled by August Sander prior to World War II to the meticulously uniform water tower photographs of Bernd and Hilla Becher. The idea of photography as a means of amassing a collection or building a typology has a lasting allure.

Also included in the exhibition is a selection of jewellery, including silver rings, earrings and bracelets. In TWO tablets ONCE a day and As Long as we Both Shall Live, Smith comments on the ubiquity of medications and the way they sit in close proximity to a person’s sense of self, making rings and earrings in the form of pharmaceutical pills and tablets. Their relationship to the photographs is somewhat unclear, aside from a shared interest in materiality, but their presence is not overly distracting.

Smith maintains a relatively light touch throughout, producing a suite of accomplished, accessible photographic works that hint towards complex ideas about material history, language and identity without becoming bogged down in semantics or self-referentiality. In archival terms, this exhibition offers a casual browse rather than a deep dive, replicating the serendipitous pleasure of perusing a dusty, rarely travelled library stack.

Footnote:

(1) As you will is reviewed on the PhotoForum website

Andrew Clark is a writer and editor based in Auckland. He has a background in fine arts and a PhD in English. His areas of interest include art, photography, literature, film and science fiction.

This review was supported by funding from Creative New Zealand.