Photographs by Wayne Barrar and Miles Hargest

This exhibition is now closed

Photographs by Miles Hargest and Wayne Barrar will open at the McDougall Art Annex on April 11. While both artists have their roots in the South Island, they are now based in the North Island, where Hargest works as a photojournalist in Auckland and Barrar teaches in Wanganui. They are both showing approximately 25 works, taken over a period of 8 years.

Miles Hargest's work provides a commentary on the social climate of Aotearoa/New Zealand now. "I have been working with photography in response to a natural sense of inquiry and am committed to the medium and its unique qualities of communication. For me photography is an intellectual as well as an emotional endeavour. Making photographs is a thinking process dealing with interrelationships and the capacity of making public literature."

Wayne Barrar's work deals with 'The Lanscape of Change'. "Our landscape is constantly being modified in order to meet the changing demands of 'development'. Some of these modifications will have a long term effect (for example, the establishment of human made lakes to provide sources for hydro-electric power); others are transitory, disappearing as natural changes (storms, plant growth, etc) obliterate them. Some make an immediate and dramatic difference to the appearance of the landscape, whereas others have a more subtle and less obviously discernible effect.

Photography can act as a record of the impact of human modification of the landscape, as well as drawing attention to the visual richness which it can sometimes generate."

('Photographs Wayne Barrar & Miles Hargest', Bulletin, No.62, March/April 1989, p.5)