Pausing Terrain

Alla McDonald / Dieneka Jansen / Layne Waetea

  • 1 Sept - 6 Oct, 2009

Pausing Terrain aims to develop a dialogue between three artists who explore the cameras relationship with aspects of urban space, specifically the unstable interfaces of suburban and urban development.

This collaborative project undertaken by Dieneke Jansen, Allan McDonald and Layne Waerea combines the local and the global by drawing together three distinctly different positions that share a dialogue with the real and yet reiterate that the camera is neither neutral nor objective.

They explore the mediums diverse but persistently indexical relationship; its bond with subject, site and event. Whether digital or analogue, photography's supposed veracity, substantiated by the authority of its indexical function continues to bear witness, validating the material world and confirming our sense of omnipresence.

Each artist works in a different zone of our increasingly gridded and commodified environment.

Dieneke Jansen works in the newly developed suburbs, particularly in the undeveloped parkland that is still finding its sense of identity. Will that unruly space conform to the town planners ideal of the themed landscape park, or will it remain undefined, without productivity or culture? A space that through its lack of definition, its vagueness, is irritating to some and provides necessary relief to others.

Allan McDonald works on the edge of the shopping precinct, where the small retailer is finding it increasingly difficult to survive in the more competitive globalised environments of cyber trading and international franchise. He builds an archive of fragile signs which periodically slip against each other to reveal unexpected narratives of the local.

Layne Waerea questions our ongoing fascination with technologies progress. The ever-present satellite eye is no longer just the domain of the few - this new layer of information is now accessed by neighbours and councils alike, making sure that both compliance and curiosity are satisfied. Waerea's video installation looks at the viral proliferation of the camera eye and the surveillance opportunities it creates from legal and civic perspectives.