Blood in the backblocks

John Collie with work from his exhibition called Life Blood. Picture / Nicola Topping

By MALCOLM BURGESS

Photography runs in John Collie's veins. Or is that developing fluid? Besides preparing for his solo show, Life Blood, at Te Tuhi-The Mark, he also lectures on the medium at the Manukau Institute of Technology, works there as a photographic technician, and has trekked through India as a photojournalist. Then there's an anti-GM march this weekend, where he'll be taking pictures for Greenpeace.

For Collie, art, politics, work and life mingle seamlessly along the wider spectrum of visible light.

So in which particular vein are the six large-format works that make up Life Blood meant to be considered? With titles like Green Desert/Dead Lamb, Silent Forest/Sheep Head, New Zealand Desert and Hanging Sheep, you'd expect fairly straightforward and descriptive fare. But despite the temptation to look at things that way, Collie is first and foremost wearing his artist hat when it comes to these works, not so much documenting nature as opening up iconic, powerful images for argument.

And while he sets the terms of reference for this artistic inquiry, he is not "selling" his concept as an advertiser would, but letting the viewer roam around these nostalgic windows at will.

That is not to say this Elam graduate is not averse to some digital manipulation to get his message across. He removed some of the vegetation in Green Desert/Dead Lamb, so a lone thistle becomes the focal point to resonate with the black eye of the dead lamb in the opposing photo.

Although he's keen for the works to speak for themselves, there is a lot of expository ephemera surrounding the exhibition to digest - in both Collie's talk and in the gallery notes. At the heart of Life Blood is the idea of the "green desert" and the interplay between how the nation sells itself as clean and green, yet has essentially destroyed the landscape through overfarming, deforestation and erosion.

"Presenting the notion of New Zealand as a green desert is my counterpoint to the myth that New Zealand is a clean green forgotten paradise," he says.

It's a timely topic, in that it asks the big question: how much is the notion of clean and green a con job and how much is central to our cultural identity?

While 50,000 distressed and unwanted sheep float in and out of the headlines on a faraway sea, Life Blood draws attention to a less-talked-about agricultural crisis adrift on our own oceans of green.

"The reality is endless miles of over-fertilised, barren and eroding grazing land populated by sheep and cattle," Collie says.

The subject matter calls to mind the black and white work of Peter Peryer, whose Dead Steer caused an uproar concerning our meat industry when it was exhibited in Germany.