invitation to the unsaid

“Every moment of this, our only life, demands to be recorded, but only if the

recording is done in verse, for otherwise its poetic essence would be lost.”

– Hannah Arendt

The photographer who is also a curator has a choice. To extend the boundaries and

territories they know, or to follow pathways that seem enticing, difficult and unpredictable.

Allan McDonald has made a clear decision to highlight photography’s divergency and

inscrutability in the assemblage of photographs and moving image works within invitation to

the unsaid.

His choice was not made without reason. While photography has always held the potential

to be complex, multifaceted and ambiguous, for McDonald the over-riding influence of the

algorithmic apparatus is driving it in the opposite direction, towards a flatness. This flatness

extends its reach as it is shared, favoured, liked and replicated. Parallel to this he also sees a

clamour for attention which posits itself as ‘democratic’. Most obvious in the populism of

our times, this loudness is averse to plurality and pushes out quiet moments that require

nuance, compassion and time.

The work represented in invitation to the unsaid not only resists the tendency towards this

flattening but also, importantly, is informed by a wider network of associations. While not

immediately obvious, the networks of influence reveal processes and relations that offer a

convincing proposition for the experimental variety of photography in Tāmaki Makaurau

Auckland. A key influence at play is the role of photographic education. The selected artists

come from a group of people, many of whom have close ties. Three generations of

photographers are represented. The various ways that their work has been developed,

influenced, tested and placed in contradistinction to each other informs a vibrant thread

within the show. The interactions between teachers, technicians, students, students who

have become teachers and teachers who are constantly revising their own practice colour

how the work is shaped and how it sits within the show. It is worth dwelling on the

importance of this. In an economic and political climate where the arts, more generally, are

being questioned, it can be easy to dismiss the value of the educator and the educational

institution. The reality is that for many emerging artists, tertiary classrooms and studios are

spaces for experimentation, self-discovery and technical development, spaces where

photography is discovered, assumptions and outlooks are challenged, and the value of

messily working things out is established as a working practice.

The images presented in invitation to the unsaid, while deeply personal, draw upon various

encounters in the world. The artists respond to people, spaces and places and the

materiality of the photographic image. However, the places are not easy, relationships are

complex and there is an uneasy plurality in the selection of works. Meditations on the lives

of others, and of other times figure in the work. So too the natural time of the land. There is

also a certain disorder to the juxtaposed works, but taking the time to look closely at the

images reveals why photography can’t be flattened out.

Someone stares away from the camera, we don’t know the reason but also can’t figure if

the view is borne of love or confusion. Someone else looks straight into the camera but we

are not really sure if the look references the person who is framed or the person they may

be thinking about. A moment is shared that is electric, personal, all-consuming. But then it is

restaged, the result is not a de-stabilisation of the moment but an extension of the

emotional gamut, a doubling. A long stare into the crater of Maungawhau reveals the place

as well as its molecular structure. Is it also returning a blank gaze to camera? Still and

moving, the point where everything should be clear is fractured by a stuttering procession

through the city, and a dissociative account of time spent by a river. Looping, counting down

the days, time travelling. Then there are spaces that are condensed, dense, contrasty and

there are also spaces of simulacra. Referencing landscape and whenua, time and the

moments of calm in the city and moments of disintegration far away from where you would

expect things to fall apart.

The work presented in invitation to the unsaid allows us to travel through what photography

offers us. Inviting a longer view and an acute emotional register. The artists respond to their

various social worlds and their perceptions of those worlds, of the world anew. Offering

hope of an alternative to the encroaching flatness.

There is also something else at play that runs counter to the noise. The idea that a focus on

multiplicities of representation can offer alternative ways of thinking about a new

politics. invitation to the unsaid offers this possibility. To think through the times we

spend with people, the value we give to memories, empathy and networks of ideas,

paying attention to our dreams and being attentive to the rhythms of the local.

David Cowlard

This essay was originally published in the catalogue for the exhibition invitation to the

unsaid at Toi ō Wairake Gallery Unitec. The exhibition was curated by Allan

McDonald and ran from 5-28 June, 2024, and featured the work of: Ziggy Bond,

Karen Crisp, Shona Dey, Erin Gosselman, Karlene Groves, Steve Lovett, Marie

Shannon, Yvonne Shaw, Lily Worrall and Suho Yoo.