Site Seeing, the latest City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi exhibition, brings together two artists, Conor Clarke (Ngāi Tahu) and Bridget Reweti (Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāi Te Rangi), to critique the colonial lens of scenic photography. Landscapes, dreamy and mercurial, are shown as a choice between the altered and the real, what we observe and what is there.
Curator, Dr Kirsty Baker says, “This exhibition asks us to reconsider the ways we – particularly tangata tiriti – have been taught to see the land around us. Through contemporary photography, Reweti and Clarke prompt us to think about the stories we have been told about the places we inhabit, and those we may have overlooked.”
Conor Clarke’s photography career has taken her from Europe and back again, and this exhibition shows her lauded Scenic Potential series. These works were created in Berlin, and at first glance look like majestic mountain ranges; greyscale peaks that rise through scuddy skies. Then the viewer notices tire tracks, and realises they are constructions. Photographs were taken of piles of dirt from building sites and digitised using the rule of Gilpin’s picturesque ideal. “I am preoccupied with finding beauty in the unspectacular,” says Clarke who is also creating new pieces for the exhibition focussed on Kaikōura tītī and the mountains where they nest and breed. “It is a privilege to be able to share these works about whenua in such close proximity to Te Tiriti o Waitangi,” said Clarke.
Bridget Reweti is showing pieces from throughout her career which has included residencies in Aotearoa, Canada, Indonesia, and Singapore. Among these will be her most recent photograms, photographic images made without a camera, of seabird feathers and bones on stone. “Seabirds are indicators of seasonal and cyclical changes in the environment, and their leaving and returning herald different meanings depending on where you are from,” says Reweti. Images from her Summering on Lakes Te Anau and Manapouri series also feature. These are a response to the historic Burton Brothers 1888 photography expedition in Fiordland and consist of gelatin silver photographs hand-coloured with earth pigments gifted from Oraka Aparima.
“It is such a joy to bring the work of these artists together for a City Gallery Wellington exhibition, and a privilege to do so at a time when questions of land custodianship are increasingly urgent,” said Dr Baker.
Site Seeing is open from 12 April to 2 August 2025 at National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, Wellington.
