Morag Stokes’s first photographic exhibition, Of Mana Island
runs at Photospace gallery 24th July to 16th August.
For details: http://www.photospace.conz/expo133.htm
The visual inspiration for this set of photographic works came primarily from Morag’s time living and working in the
Middle East, but was also fed by her love of Spanish ceramic decoration and her recent interest in Australian Aboriginal
painting. The photography itself was done on Mana Island, off the west coast of Wellington, where she spent a week as
resident artist. This came from her participation in the 2006 Global Eye Exhibition at Pataka Museum of Culture and
Heritage.
The unmanipulated photographs, which form the basis of the digitally composited works, are of the natural and recent
cultural history of Mana Island, capturing something of its regenerating wetlands and grasslands, shore fauna and flora,
pastoral history and human footprint. The photographic works have developed in tandem with her painting process.
Pattern, detail and symmetry are key ingredients on both sides, with one creative language feeding the other. ‘My week
of near solitude on Mana Island has been the catalyst for this creative distillation.’
ENDS
www.photospace.co.nz
www.photospacegallery.com