Encounter

Encounter

Shaun Waugh

Two Rooms
16 Putiki St, Grey Lynn

4 June - 3 July 2021

Opening: 5:30pm Thursday 3 June

Part of the Auckland Festival of Photography

Reviewed by John Hurrell for EyeContact

Shaun Waugh, ICON Blue (i), 2021

To encounter is to meet, confront or be faced with a person or thing. Shaun Waugh’s exhibition Encounter foregrounds these aspects of experience, framed within the realm of contemporary photography and its relationship to what we might call the ‘real’. Waugh’s practice highlights the fraught relationship between images and the world they profess to represent – a relationship the artist describes as defined by deception, reduction and seduction. Waugh critically interrogates the frontiers presented by emergent technologies and their profound impact on the medium. His images confront us with representations which are not as certain as they first appear, prompting us to reconsider and redefine what constitutes contemporary photography.