It provides links with historical and communal practice that is steeped in pedagogy and rich in wairua.

The work shared in this exhibition pays tribute to this space through transitional works that require the viewer to heterogeneously contemplate past, present and future as they navigate memory, perception and social disruption.

Post-pop-retro screen-printed imagery plays with notions of Covid-19 inspired social change. The installation is virus-like, taking over, spreading and dispersing within the gallery. The space shifts between the illumination of family photographs within light-box containers and the disruption of contextual data within photographic imagery: The referents in the photograph disappear as a subject and reappear as an object. Private collides with public.

Raw black canvases spotlight social engagement through the ‘handed down’ and passed on. The figures are often shown firmly disengaged with the viewer from their imagined worlds, with the access point quietly waiting to be discovered – their narratives investigated and repackaged with a questioning lens on custom and tradition.

Connections to community and the space are evident within the work as it demands conversations dealing with social constructs buried deep into our psych. It speaks of inclusion and rites of passage, collective and private agreements we understand when we navigate mental and physical spaces, like memory and communal locations such as the Gallagher Academy of Performing Arts.

Artists: Lynette Fisher, Nicol Sanders-O’Shea & Anne Shirley