Flanerie & Figments was the inaugural exhibition of the Courtenay Place Light boxes.

The Courtenay Place Park light boxes offer an intense, highly public exhibition space in 3-metre tall, cor-ten steel and glass, LED boxes, with a backdrop of buildings, buses and trees instead of the traditional white walls of a gallery. This is the first exhibition space of its kind in New Zealand and relishes the opportunity in taking art out of the gallery and into the public realm.

The inaugural exhibition Flânerie and Figments is timed to coincide with the opening of Courtenay Place Park and features contemporary photography by eight Wellington Artists, Andy Palmer, Victoria Birkenshaw, John Lake, Amelia Handscomb, Shaun Lawson, Clare Noonan Steve Rowe and Jessica Silk. The exhibition uses photography to encourage people to consider how they use and understand their city. Playing on the perception of New Zealand photography, the exhibition takes 16 strong individual pieces that feed off, and critique their urban environment.



Curatorial Statement

Flânerie and Figments begins with a rather simple yet difficult ambition to encourage people to consider their understanding of and relationship to the city. The Light Box concept provides something of a ‘sledge hammer’ approach to fulfilling this aim by being so inherently in ones face as eight, three metre high illuminated boxes on Wellingtons busiest night-life street only can.

The group of artists was chosen based on the fact that they operate across the genres and practices of contemporary photography. The works were chosen to reflect the various practices and genres but also to feed off the environment in which the work was to be shown. Some works can be seen as comments on the nature of the billboard (and more broadly, advertising photography in general); while other works are the antitheses of not only advertising photography but what you might expect to see in a public exhibition such as this.

There exists a crossover between all the works in Flânerie and Figments. Regardless of style or subject matter an examination of identity, the use of the portrait, or the critique of context. Through parallax and a sideways glance, the experience and reading of the work by a pedestrian at 5kph or a motorist at 50kph is interrogated. The modes of experience that this park design creates can only be heightened and further explored as the exhibition space becomes part of the arts infrastructure on the city.

When all is said and done Flânerie and Figments surrenders itself to the street, acknowledging that peoples perceptions, while catching a bus or staggering to the next watering hole will ultimately rule the day. As with any show, relationships identified and exploited may go unseen. People as always will bring their own perceptions to bear, however in an urban environment such as this; the scale and intensity create a hyper environment in which this exists. The scale of Courtenay Place where one can view the work from 200m away, adjacent to buses, billboards and buildings, any deliberate relationships are likely to be watered down. In this way an interesting dynamic is played out where instead of an environment where viewing an object is the aim, the act of viewing is subverted by the everyday.

Simon Bush-King
Andy Palmer
Curators

The City Gallery, Wellington is managing future exhibitions in the Courtenay Place Light Boxes with Give us a sign curated by Heather Galbraith.



Image Credits: Andy Palmer, Clare Noonan, John Lake, Simon Bush-King
With thanks to the Wellington Public Art Panel, particularly Heather Galbraith and Rob Garrett