Notions of space

Pho­to­grapher Simon Devitt cov­ers a fair bit of ground in the pur­suit of his archi­tec­tural sub­ject mat­ter. Many read­ers will have seen his work on the pages of Archi­tec­ture NZ, Urbis, land­scape Archi­tec­ture NZ and, indeed, ProDesign. To be fair, those mags are all from the same AGM stable, but what the heck, a little self-promotion never killed anybody.

From 'I See You There', Simon Devitt's upcom­ing exhib­i­tion at the McNamara Gallery.

Any­way, Mr Devitt is a busy guy, with a couple of exhib­i­tions in the pipeline, both upcom­ing at Whanganui's McNamara Gal­lery. The first, which runs, from 5 – 6 Feb­ru­ary is entitled 'I See You There'. Devitt says this body of work comes from his com­mer­cial work as a pho­to­grapher of architecture.

"These are pic­tures that stand by them­selves out­side of the story they ori­gin­ated from. They have seduct­ive, some­times sur­real qual­it­ies. These pic­tures reveal a sense of place, a sense of belong­ing; how it felt for me to be there in that moment."

From 'I See You There', Simon Devitt's upcom­ing exhib­i­tion at the McNamara Gallery.

From 'I See You There', Simon Devitt's upcom­ing exhib­i­tion at the McNamara Gallery.

From 'I See You There', Simon Devitt's upcom­ing exhib­i­tion at the McNamara Gallery.

The second exhib­i­tion Devitt is involved in isn't a solo out­ing, and it only has a week to run in Whan­ganui before it moves cross coun­try to Aratoi: The Wair­ar­apa Museum of Art and His­tory. This exhib­i­tion, 'A Ser­i­ous Kind of Beauty: The Heroic Land­scape' also fea­tures works from Wayne Bar­rar, Peter Evans, Derek Hende­r­son, Wil­liam Part­ing­ton, Arthur Iles and oth­ers. Fans of epic, unusual and his­tor­ical land­scape pho­to­graphy shouldn't be disappointed.

- Michael Barrett

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