Stretching boundaries

By CORDELIA LOCKETT

The definition of landscape art is stretched in Land Mark, an exhibition at the Corban Estate Arts Centre in Henderson. Photographer Allan McDonald and sculptor and painter Neil Miller each refer to specific points in the local landscape, but Susan Jowsey's is an interior landscape - existing in the mind.

McDonald says the group was interested in how the landscape reveals layers of history.

McDonald's large black and white prints record sites along the rail journey travelling west from Auckland City. Victorian signal boxes, railway overbridges and graffiti-covered walls document a flipside of journey usually seen only by train.

" There is an anarchic, ruinous quality to the corridor that I like. It's uncared for and therefore fragile," he says.

McDonald has added another historical layer by exhibiting, alongside his own work, photographs taken by the late Auckland historian Jack Diamond. Diamond, who died in 2001, was also interested in landscape at the point of change. McDonald wanted to hold a visual conversation on the gallery walls between Diamond's work and his own, 50 years on.

Diamond was a methodical recorder of West Auckland, taking thousands of photographs during the 1950s and 60s. This is the first time the public has been able to see the images, which are usually housed at the Henderson Library.

McDonald said Diamond's photographic interest in how industrial change affected landscape and communities was ahead of the times.

"His work prefigured the social documentary photographers of the 1970s. He was recording things no one else gave a toss about. He had a sophisticated, sensitive eye and was very enthusiastic about recording history and what it meant for the future."

Both Miller and Jowsey use found objects in their work. But while Jowsey was scouring second-hand shops for handbags and hair curlers, Miller looked for guns and hand-grenades, coins and stamps.

Miller has painted gentle watercolours of local landscapes, such as the Whatipu wharf, and stamped them with measuring tools, like road markers and rulers. His point is to question the way national days of celebration have evolved from our colonial past. In the Anzac Day watercolour, Miller painted an apple tree, likening the troops who went to war to a crop of apples picked and boxed for export.

In contrast, Jowsey's work, using a combination of old-fashioned domestic objects - haberdashery, knitted toys, combs, needles, pressed flowers and knitting - is decidedly feminine.

In Posy, Jowsey, who won the 1996 Visa Gold Art Award for her blanket series, has dismantled old handbags to expose their inner workings and reveal the owner's personal history.

"So much of our history has been blokey," Jowsey says. "I wanted to say something about the invisibility of women by exposing the inside of their handbags."

The artists will speak about their work on Sunday, September 7 at 11am at the gallery.

Exhibition

* What: Land Mark, new work by Sue Jowsey, Allan McDonald, Neil Miller

* Where & when: Corban Estate Arts Centre, 426 Great North Rd, to Sept 14