A place to stand

Turangawaewae begins with an understanding of place. What is this place you have
come to, and how does it relate to your place, the place where you stand, your marae
or home? Where do you stand relative to others and their belief systems and
worldviews? How do you express this through art and design; what is your physical
and material starting point? Turangawaewae is intrinsic to shaping your perspective
and framing the modes (exhibition, narrative, performance, product) whereby you
interact with your audience.

An area that makes Wellington home for myself and others is the sense of community gathering within the Civic Centre. The Civic Centre contains the Town Hall, The City Gallery and the Michael Fowler Centre which are all community gathering areas. I used a long shutter speed to capture a lot of light as well as create a spark using a torch throughout my images. The spark represents myself exploring new areas of Wellington as I am not from here. Wellington is a very active city and everything seems to be moving really fast, I wanted to use this beam of light to represent this as there aren’t any people in my images. Light is my main focus and photographing at night using areas that reflects that light brings across my idea in an abstract way. I wanted to show my idea in an area that is visually interesting and have meaning to myself as well as to other people.