Russ Flatt - Survey
Russ Flatt - Survey
Russ Flatt
Tim Melville Gallery
4 Winchester St, Newton, Auckland
01 - 25 May 2024
Opening Wednesday 01 May 6:00PM
Russ Flatt. Bicycle, 2010
After returning to Aotearoa New Zealand from New York, where he had been working as a fashion photographer, Russ Flatt (Ngāti Kahungunu) completed a PGDip FA at Auckland University’s Elam School of Fine Arts.
He graduated in 2013 having won the University’s Post-graduate Photography Prize.
Flatt’s work addresses notions of identity and belonging - including queer and Māori identities – and his early works evoke a re-imagined past as a means to understand and recognise the present.
More recently Flatt's practice has expanded to encompass drone and Point Cloud imaging technology through which he has produced both still photographs and moving image works.
Te Ahua, Te Wa, Te Atea was first presented at the MTG Napier (curator Toni MacKinnon) and, in expanded form, as Tekau Mā Rua at Tim Melville Gallery in 2022.
It includes hawk’s-eye views of significant sites where Ngāti Kahungunu were alienated by Pakeha settlement of Heretaunga Hawkes Bay