Physicality & Presence
Goat Island Road, heading down into the valley.
Almost a month after RANGE opened in Tāmaki Makaurau I’m still soaking up the warmth of the experience and this culmination of the last twelve months of making.
(From our artist talk) ‘We met in July of last year through Kate van der Drift in her online Art Photo School. We met weekly over zoom. Many of us met in person for the first time as we installed this show. We’ve adapted to talking to each other and about our work through screens so it’s a real pleasure to be here in person. Our essence and quality comes through the screen but on a kind of dimmer switch. There’s an obvious physicality to presence — faces, voices, bodies — and our work revolves around this theme of physicality, materiality, and locality. The word ‘range’ has over 50 distinct definitions — it defines geographic terrain, movement, skill, sound, distance. In this show it serves as an intersection or a pivot point, a centre of gravity our work can orbit around.’
Meeting the APS & Range cohort in July 2025, working towards this project, the hours of walking and listening and thinking and making, working together towards an exhibition, installing, speaking about our work with visitors, in our artist talk and on video, manning the gallery, sharing writing behind the work, packing up and deinstalling, receiving the Exhibition Award from the Auckland Festival of Photography — a huge amount of love, effort and devotion has gone into this mahi over the last year.
We didn’t realise it, but it seems our collective art-making offers a kind of antidote against the rising tide of tech and AI, a way to slow down and pay attention that isn’t intentionally in revolt of all that (though many of us feel unsettled by that rising tide which isn’t necessarily going to raise all ships as the saying goes) but is more a simple turning away, a turning of the attention to light and aliveness, a lifting up of the face from our phones and screens towards the literal stuff of life, the rocks and dirt and roots and leaves and water and light and time and decay of life, towards the animal warmth, the human warmth of being alive.
There’s a particular kind of experience I have when in conversation with AI that I’ve termed ‘machine flattery’. At first I liked it — I had a weird medical issue that few medical personnel wanted to talk to me about and the ghost-in-the-machine did not usher me out of its rooms the way the five different GPs I saw did. It was soothing for a little while and I started using it more often, but it chilled me when I realised that every leader consulting with AI on war tactics will have his own version of this machine flattery — ‘What a great insight!’ I’ve restricted my use since then to almost nothing and learned about the vast resources AI consumes. Of course I believe in tech as a tool, working in concert with the tools we humans innately have and the skills we’ve worked to develop within ourselves. It’s just that I prefer the flattery of earth against the soles of my feet. I prefer asking a question on a long walk and seeing what answers land on my head. It’s that I prefer being in consultation with water and time and animal warmth. What a privilege it is, and at times a great frustration, to be alive, to feel, to be mortal.
Thanks to Kate and to the entire RANGE cohort and to all my loved ones near and far pouring love and grace into my life. I’m so here for it, for the light and dark of it, and I’m so grateful to be here.
Happy Solstice,
AMB