Gavin Hipkins: The Homely

7 July - 16 September 2001 in the Entire Gallery
This artist’s project initiated by City Gallery Wellington, will show recent photographic work by Wellington-based artist, Gavin Hipkins. Exhibiting regularly throughout New Zealand and internationally, Hipkins has emerged in the 1990s as one of New Zealand’s foremost young photographers. He was included in the Sydney Biennale of 1998 and in Arte 2000, 16 artists from 16 countries in Turin, Italy.

The City Gallery Wellington project, The Homely, cites a history of New Zealand and Australia by re-presenting elements that have been used to define nationhood(s) and historical folklore. As well as imaging colonial links to the late British Empire, The Homely explores the ongoing attempt by Pakeha to define their nativeness, and in so doing, to call their country ‘home’. Themes of Western suburbanisation, Catholicism and Americanism are explored in the latter part of the show.

The Homely is envisaged as a photographic frieze with images, or cultural fragments, sitting close to each other – relying on each other – for narrative thread. Images of museums, war memorials, statues and parts of paintings are part of this narrative. While many photographs have their place of origin in domestic settings, The Homely also ventures away from the domestic to explore the representation of New Zealand as an apparent natural paradise.