From The Clinic

First sampled by Ewen McDonald for Public/Private (the 2nd Auckland City Art Gallery Triennale, a year ago), Neil shows further work in his series "From The Clinic". The feeling of these digital prints processed from 4 x 5" colour negatives, is of eerie detail. We are offered more visual information than we would normally take in upon entering a room, as our eye scans the intimacy and the technology of various medical sites - operating theatres, morgues, post-mortem and dissection rooms - all clinically clean, "empty" and sterile - a bit like the white cube of the gallery.

We note the photographer's careful, almost forensic examination of the scene. As he moves, we move from one room into another - the objective eye so-called, gazing through the large format camera, all scrutiny and power. And it is remarkable what is there: plastics and tubes in red, yellow and blue become linear flourishes in a pale field, a field of scrubbed cream. And in this field, the body is deeply implicated but the person never present. Both public and private. Stunning photographs these: sculptural; lush; sexy even; though probably not for the squeamish.

Selected works