Breckon and Shaun Waugh: Two Photographers

Overview

Photography exploring ideas around place, shelter and protection, through physical or digital manipulation will be on show at the suitably named Two Photographers exhibition at Wellington’s non-commercial artist-run Enjoy Gallery. Two Photographers will present a selection of photographs from Breckon and Shaun Waugh.

Western Australia-based New Zealand artist Kate Breckon’s ‘Real State’ series features images cut from real estate advertisements, selected for their likeness to old and semi run-down properties she lived in while flatting. Prompted by the physical scars of these rental properties, Breckon further scars the images – cutting and tearing them to consider the provenance of each house and expose the wear and tear of sheltering emotional people.

Shaun Waugh is a Wellington artist whose practice draws on photography’s artistic and technical histories, exploring a balance between ‘pictorial’ and ‘conceptual’ strategies. Waugh’s ‘Covenant cut-outs’ foreground the act of selection, using digital manipulation to mask areas of the photograph beneath a single colour. The series also references the protection of natural and cultural features on privately owned land through the legal mechanism of an open space covenant – a landscape project initiated in 1977 by the QE2 National Trust.

An artist talk with Breckon and Shaun Waugh will be held on Friday, September 5 at 5.30pm.