Annual Fine Arts Commission - James K Lowe

Annual Commission

Aotea Gallery • 9 June - 24 June

Opens
6:00 pm on Saturday 9 June
Hours
Daily 9am to 5pm
Where
Aotea Center Queen Street Auckland Central
Yes
Artists
James K Lowe
Theme
 
2012 is the second year of the Auckland Festival of Photography's Annual Commission - the sole public commission of photographic art by a fine arts photographer in New Zealand.

The Commission provides an opportunity to support and promote an Auckland photographic talent as well as creating an important cultural and artistic asset for present and future Auckland audiences to enjoy.

This year's commissioned artist is James K Lowe, a 23-year-old graduate from Elam School of Fine Arts. James is relatively new to the art of photography, having begun experimenting while at Elam, but already he demonstrates a sophisticated style and very particular point of view. His meticulous photography is influenced by existentialist philosophy and also heavily informed by film - his images carefully constructed to create a heightened naturalism.  His photographs suggest captured moments within a larger narrative, a larger unknown which happens before and after the image.  It is the suggestion of this larger unknown which gives his images their depth and resonance-or as he says "like a chip of something bigger…"

"I am a New Zealander whose grandparents were Chinese immigrants. In recent years I've experienced a strong connection with the wider Asian culture that I formerly rejected in my youth. Reading Tze Ming Mok's essay Race You There, about growing up as a foreigner in what was to become a multicultural society, opened up a new dialogue for me within my art and within my own social periphery.....The photographs are set in an in-between state: the situation is in the midst of a greater picture, a snippet of what is to come, and what happened before you arrived. The promise of something better, or dread of something worse. In the commission I hope to utilise the space in the same way I approach my photographs, as a narrative. The photographs are the story, the exhibition is a book. Each chapter flows to the next, every story introduced and concluded at the same time."
… James Lowe, 2012.

 

JamesKLowe

The Channel by James K Lowe

 

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