Ruby’s Room (1998 - 2007)
The outcome of a sustained critical investigation into the imagination and representation of childhood, Ruby’s Room has been exhibited and published widely in New Zealand, Australia and Germany. It was selected as the keynote contemporary photography exhibition for the inaugural Paris Photoquai Biennale in 2007. Thirty photographs from the series were acquired by Te Papa Tongarewa for their collection in 2011.
Ice Blink (2011) Clouds: NZ
A sole-authored photographic book, composed of parallel visual narratives of real and simulated Antarctic environments. Ice Blink challenges the visual and literary narratives that inform seeing, and representation of, Antarctica and reveals a popular Antarctic imaginary as the commercialised site of a compromised and devalued sublime. Ice Blink was exhibited at the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Melbourne in 2008. Images from this series continue to feature in exhibitions internationally that focus on representations of the ice, tourism and climate change.
At the End of the Earth (2008)
At the End of the Earth is a suite of projects undertaken in Antarctica in 2008 during a US National Science Foundation polar arts fellowship. Piss Poles, (2008) is a series of photographs of the yellow flags that mark approved sites for urinating outdoors. Bitch In Slippers, a collaboration with writer, Lloyd Jones and typographer, Sarah Maxey,wasexhibited at the City Gallery Wellington in 2012. It comprised a collection of photographs of brightly coloured trucks with girls’ names and the monumental Spoolhenge, a stack of cable spools at the South Pole Station. Both series of images address the politics of Antarctic representation, challenge the palette by which Antarctica is known and draw attention to the gendered nature of our relationships to place.
These Rough Notes (2012) Manhire, B., Noble, A., Meehan, N., Griffin, A. These Rough Notes (2012). VUP: Wellington.
Drawing its title from one of the last pages of Robert Scott’s journal, this book and performance project is a collaboration between a poet, a musician and a photographer to commemorate the centenary of Scott’s death on the ice, and the Erebus tragedy. Utilising historic and contemporary photographs of exploration and discovery and images of the Erebus debris trail downloaded from the internet, the mixed sources reflect on the histories of Antarctic representation and offer an evocation of Antarctica haunted by human presence.
