invitation to the unsaid
invitation to the unsaid
“Every moment of this, our only life, demands to be recorded, but only if the
recording is done in verse, for otherwise its poetic essence would be lost.”
– Hannah Arendt
The photographer who is also a curator has a choice. To extend the boundaries and
territories they know, or to follow pathways that seem enticing, difficult and unpredictable.
Allan McDonald has made a clear decision to highlight photography’s divergency and
inscrutability in the assemblage of photographs and moving image works within invitation to
the unsaid.
His choice was not made without reason. While photography has always held the potential
to be complex, multifaceted and ambiguous, for McDonald the over-riding influence of the
algorithmic apparatus is driving it in the opposite direction, towards a flatness. This flatness
extends its reach as it is shared, favoured, liked and replicated. Parallel to this he also sees a
clamour for attention which posits itself as ‘democratic’. Most obvious in the populism of
our times, this loudness is averse to plurality and pushes out quiet moments that require
nuance, compassion and time.
The work represented in invitation to the unsaid not only resists the tendency towards this
flattening but also, importantly, is informed by a wider network of associations. While not
immediately obvious, the networks of influence reveal processes and relations that offer a
convincing proposition for the experimental variety of photography in Tāmaki Makaurau
Auckland. A key influence at play is the role of photographic education. The selected artists
come from a group of people, many of whom have close ties. Three generations of
photographers are represented. The various ways that their work has been developed,
influenced, tested and placed in contradistinction to each other informs a vibrant thread
within the show. The interactions between teachers, technicians, students, students who
have become teachers and teachers who are constantly revising their own practice colour
how the work is shaped and how it sits within the show. It is worth dwelling on the
importance of this. In an economic and political climate where the arts, more generally, are
being questioned, it can be easy to dismiss the value of the educator and the educational
institution. The reality is that for many emerging artists, tertiary classrooms and studios are
spaces for experimentation, self-discovery and technical development, spaces where
photography is discovered, assumptions and outlooks are challenged, and the value of
messily working things out is established as a working practice.
The images presented in invitation to the unsaid, while deeply personal, draw upon various
encounters in the world. The artists respond to people, spaces and places and the
materiality of the photographic image. However, the places are not easy, relationships are
complex and there is an uneasy plurality in the selection of works. Meditations on the lives
of others, and of other times figure in the work. So too the natural time of the land. There is
also a certain disorder to the juxtaposed works, but taking the time to look closely at the
images reveals why photography can’t be flattened out.
Someone stares away from the camera, we don’t know the reason but also can’t figure if
the view is borne of love or confusion. Someone else looks straight into the camera but we
are not really sure if the look references the person who is framed or the person they may
be thinking about. A moment is shared that is electric, personal, all-consuming. But then it is
restaged, the result is not a de-stabilisation of the moment but an extension of the
emotional gamut, a doubling. A long stare into the crater of Maungawhau reveals the place
as well as its molecular structure. Is it also returning a blank gaze to camera? Still and
moving, the point where everything should be clear is fractured by a stuttering procession
through the city, and a dissociative account of time spent by a river. Looping, counting down
the days, time travelling. Then there are spaces that are condensed, dense, contrasty and
there are also spaces of simulacra. Referencing landscape and whenua, time and the
moments of calm in the city and moments of disintegration far away from where you would
expect things to fall apart.
The work presented in invitation to the unsaid allows us to travel through what photography
offers us. Inviting a longer view and an acute emotional register. The artists respond to their
various social worlds and their perceptions of those worlds, of the world anew. Offering
hope of an alternative to the encroaching flatness.
There is also something else at play that runs counter to the noise. The idea that a focus on
multiplicities of representation can offer alternative ways of thinking about a new
politics. invitation to the unsaid offers this possibility. To think through the times we
spend with people, the value we give to memories, empathy and networks of ideas,
paying attention to our dreams and being attentive to the rhythms of the local.
David Cowlard
This essay was originally published in the catalogue for the exhibition invitation to the
unsaid at Toi ō Wairake Gallery Unitec. The exhibition was curated by Allan
McDonald and ran from 5-28 June, 2024, and featured the work of: Ziggy Bond,
Karen Crisp, Shona Dey, Erin Gosselman, Karlene Groves, Steve Lovett, Marie
Shannon, Yvonne Shaw, Lily Worrall and Suho Yoo.
