The New Sun
Jhana Millers Gallery
Wellington (NZ)
11 February - 13 March 2021
The New Sun, through photographs and embroidered textile works, juxtaposes the ‘empirical’ finds of land trace (arguably the result of primarily male labour), with the more speculative imaginings of what life might have entailed for the women living with or alongside the male mining workforce within early settler-colonial Aotearoa.
A cycle of nine photographs are combined in space with a smaller cycle of embroideries on linen. The photographs have an inherent taxonomy of structure or material. The importance of site and place within an historical framework and context is also important. The photographs have been taken between 2013 and 2016, a period when McQuarrie was travelling regularly around Aotearoa photographing sites of forming mining activity, and diving deep into place-based histories.
The process of figuring out who we are now, is deeply reliant on how we got here and whose histories and legacies we carry with us, in order to provide a platform of knowledge and awareness from which we can situate our own place to stand. These works seek to offer a different way into thinking about this period of our history, but with our feet planted firmly in the present, to achieve a richer understanding of the legacies and traces threading between then and now, there and here.
Full catalogue text here
Exhibition video here
Floor talk audio on SoundCloud: Here
'The New Sun' 2021: Jhana Millers Gallery
Water Race. 2016. 83 x 83 cm: Rohe of Kati Huirapa ki Puketeraki
They gave you a list. 2021.: Linen and cotton thread. 37.5 cm sq
Tunnel. 2013. 43 x 43 cm.: Rohe of Ngāi Tahu.
'The New Sun' 2021: Jhana Millers Gallery
The brightness is blinding. 2020. : Linen and cotton thread. 37.5 cm sq
Fool's gold. 2017. 83 x 83 cm.: Rohe of Ngāi Tahu.
At home you called them mountains.: 2021. Linen and cotton thread.
Flume trestles. 2014. 58 x 58 cm.: Rohe of Ngāi Tahu.
It seems you spend every waking: moment. 2020. Linen & cotton thread
'The New Sun' 2021: Jhana Millers Gallery
Incline. 2016. 43 x 43 cm.: Rohe of Ngāti Hauā (Waikato Tainui)
Sluiced hills. 2016. 58 x 58 cm.: Rohe of Kati Huirapa ki Puketeraki
Tailings. 2016. 83 x 83 cm.: Rohe of Ngāi Tahu.
You blinked and it was winter. 2021: Linen and cotton thread. 37.5 cm sq
'The New Sun' 2021: Jhana Millers Gallery
Mine shaft. 2016. 43 x 43 cm.: Rohe of Kati Huirapa ki Puketeraki
His labour is gouged into the land.: 2021. Linen and cotton thread.
Black Sand 2017. 83 x 83 cm. : Rohe of Ngāi Tahu.
You do not have time for sorrow.: 2021. Linen and cotton thread.
'The New Sun' 2021: Jhana Millers Gallery
'The New Sun' 2021: Jhana Millers Gallery
'The New Sun' 2021: Jhana Millers Gallery
