Rhonda says her art can mean different things to different people.
Rhonda says her art can mean different things to different people.
Rhonda Bunyan's latest exhibition, Engram: Memory Trace, is a clear departure from the usual landscapes and photos of Mt Taranaki she is well known for.
The name of the exhibition came from a conversation with one of Rhonda's sons, she says.
"I showed him the images I had been playingwith. As soon as he saw them, he said they were like engrams, the traces of memory stored in the brain. I looked into the meaning of engram a bit more and it fitted perfectly with what I was trying to portray."
Rhonda was joined by family members for the opening night of her exhibition.
While the existence of neurological engrams is not generally disputed in science, the actual way in which they work, or where exactly they might be stored in the brain, is still under debate.
What happens to memories, and why some last and others become forgotten, is a fascinating topic, says Rhonda, and she hopes her exhibition makes people pause and think.
The exhibition features 25 photographs Rhonda has taken and edited, exploring the shapes, patterns and shadows to be found in water and sand.
Luminous and ethereal, the finished black and white images invite the viewer to interpret them through the lens of their own memory.
To avoid influencing the viewer, Rhonda has simply named the pieces numerically, Engram 1 through to Engram 25.
"I don't want to give people my perception of what they see, but to leave it to them to decide what the image is for them. That will be influenced by their own memory traces or engrams, and their own experiences."
Walking around the exhibition with Rhonda, she shares her own interpretation of one of the images.
"I see rebirth in this photo, a woman rising from the flames, almost like a phoenix rising from the ashes."
It may not be what you see, she says. The image is open to any interpretation a viewer may place on it.
"That is what art is all about. Everyone has a different reaction to something, everyone sees art differently."
While the artist, Rhonda Bunyan, sees a woman rising from the flames in this image, she says what you see might be quite different.
Rhonda spent many hours photographing sand and water to create her exhibition, using her Canon 650D camera and an iPhone 10 to capture the images.
"I spent a lot of time at Kai Iwi beach, that was somewhere I kept returning to. I also went to Back Beach as well as a couple of beaches near Wellington."
As Rhonda continued to play with and develop her idea, she says she began discovering the best times, the best tide positions and the best spots to create the images she wanted.
"I used a special software to edit the images, and create what I felt best captured the idea of engrams."
More than 1000 photos were edited by Rhonda, before she began the process of selecting the ones for the exhibition.
"From 1000 to 25 sounds tough, but it became if not easy, at least somehow logical to see what fitted and what had captured the essence of the concept."
Rhonda then had the final selection printed by a fine art printer and professionally framed.
The result is a striking and thought-provoking exhibition which challenges viewers to do more than just passively look at images, but rather demands they take the time to reflect and draw on their own personal engrams to see what each image is.
