Glaister Ennor Graduate Art Awards

I was thrilled to win the Barfoot & Thompson Award a couple of weeks back, thanks to Glaister Ennor and OREX Gallery. The judges were John Daly-Peoples and Rex Armstrong. Daly-Peoples was very perseptive about my work, which was most refreshing after years of being asked what my work is 'about'.

Unfortunately on the gallery website the reproduction of my work isn't so great, but the other winners' work looks good.

(From left to right: the chap from Barfoot & Thompson (apologies for not recalling the name), Bibi Ashger (Glaister Ennor staff chice award), Matthew Carter (Glaister Ennor Award), John Daly-Peoples, Rex Armstrong, and myself.)

Blue Morning Glory

This photograph is part of It's a Draw, currently hanging at Artstation until the end of Saturday. Unfortunately my name is misspelt in all promotional material, and this seemed unable to be altered. I had a prize giving to attend the same night as the Artstation opening, so I perhaps paid this mistake less heed than I should have.

Paul Pachter folded the image for the exhibition, and I will post a photograph of this sometime next week.

Karen Crisp in Private Converstaion

Gina Ferguson wrote this for the Outside catalogue. The image above is Kahikatea (paintball), referred to in the essay. Anzac Valley and Rotorua (Tikitapu) are viewable on previous blog posts.

Karen Crisp operates primarily within a post-documentary photographic practice. The photograph provides a scene for examination of the land and the mediated relationships that form through the physical, historical, personal and associative meanings it conjures in the viewer.

Large format lets you see all sorts of stuff, at times you begin to look at details with greater attention than if you were there. This lets you examine the greater scope with an eye for looking beyond the foreground and beneath the surface. When I travel I am always looking at landscapes, and of course it is difficult to be constantly looking for that which has been lost. How to photograph something that is not there? (1)

In these landscapes mediation is primarily sought through absence. The loss of habitat, culture, innocence or the complexities of personal loss, constructs a space that is rich in a history of meaning. These sites are now contestable spaces. Kahikatea (paintball) is photographed on farmland in Te Aroha, the fence is constructed on contested land; it is the target of young boys’ play. The mock fight of childhood parodies the complex adult negotiations over land, the fence signifying the cultural divisions that remain. The irony within Kahikatea (paintball) is also evident in Rotorua (Tikitapu). The familiarity of the typical New Zealand bush clad mountains shrouded in mist is an apt background for the muddied reflection in the lake, reminding us that land negotiations remain unclear. Crisp draws our attention to the raft, somewhat askew, empty, drifting upon a lake it operates as a platform from which youth spring into the deeper unknown shifting waters. Once occupied and echoing with laughter it now resonates in the silence of the departed.

These are places that I have visited, they are all sites of play. (2)

Loss of innocence upon entrance into an adult world is reiterated in the abandoned playhouse that features in Anzac Valley. The playhouse, an icon of childhood occupancy is also a reminder of the human desire to inhabit and lay claim to a place. To want, have and to hold, finally own, if only to let go again. This sentiment is echoed in the empty birdcage; in looking you see what is missing, absent or like the bird, recently flown.
Crisp oscillates between the occupant and the absent which is encapsulated in a type of visual poetry. She seduces us into a safe world through the comfort of the familiar, the sentimentality of childhood memories, idealized landscapes and our own backyard, to then shift the ground in the eyes of the viewer; for these are no ordinary landscapes.

1 & 2: Karen Crisp in private conversation, May 2009

Inside Out

(Click on the image to enlarge.)

John Hurrel has recently reviewed the George Fraser exhibition on his eyeCONTACT blog: "a forum built to encourage art reviews and critical discussion about the visual culture of Aotearoa New Zealand." This is what he had to say about my work:

Karen Crisp’s very precise coloured images first impressed me in a Bath Street group show last year. These photographs too are remarkable. They have a subtle dreamlike (or fairytale) quality, a sense of otherworldliness. Their haunting atmosphere draws you back for repeated viewings - for their dimension of strange ‘oddness’ is hard to put your finger on. They are not creepy, just very mysterious. Nor are they ‘over the top.’ Everything is tightly controlled, nuanced and discreet.

The rest can be found here.

Outside Invitation

Click on the image to enlarge.

Lot 33: Rotorua (Tikitapu)

PhotoForum Fundraising Auction at Webb's, 7:00 tonight.

London

I found my London series of photographs on the PhotoForum website the other day. I had almost forgotten that they have been archived there. I submitted the work to the up:date// The Active Eye photography survey, not long after returning to NZ after nearly a decade in London. This series of work was submitted for my BA examination when I was studying at the London College of Communication. I can't seem to link to my page, but by clicking on search, artists or categories can be found. A friend helped with the Photoshop, and it is much more crunchy than my personal aesthetic. I avoid the unsharp mask.