December 13, 2024 - February 21, 2025
installation view - front gallery
installation view - front gallery
installation view - front gallery
installation view - front gallery
installation view - front gallery
installation view - front gallery
installation view - front gallery
installation view - front through to back gallery
installation view - back gallery
installation view - back gallery
HETEROGLOSSIA 2 is an exhibition by multidisciplinary Lyttelton-based artist Emma Wallbanks. This is her first solo show at JSG, and follows on from the exhibition Heteroglossia held at CoCA in 2020.
In HETEROGLOSSIA 2, six striking, medium-format framed photographs command the front gallery. Several are dual images of black & white photographs with outsourced colour slides, while others include text handwritten by the artist. A series of ten much smaller, more intimate works hang on the far wall. Made of hand-printed black & white photographs with outsourced or original slides, the viewer is invited to peer through narrow windows cut into black mats. These works then lead us through to the back gallery, where a super 8mm video is projected on a curved screen.
In her artist's statement, Emma writes "Heteroglossia as a project is concerned with trauma as a central theme. The intention is to collect, transform and regurgitate content that is difficult, discarded, brutalised and maimed, and turn it into something imperfectly beautiful and compelling." She continues "The historical canon has tended to prioritise information on a linear narrative, and my work subverts this. By compiling historical vernacular slides, content that is inherently anonymous and representing the images in a non-linear non-factual way, the result is situated in abstract emotion and leans away from narrative structure. I aim to layer histories and languages and present these in a compelling and emotive manner, intended as a vehicle for empathy..."
Below is an extract from the essay Undertow written by Kristy Dunn to accompany the exhibition:
…"Within these acts, the cracks and shadows of a life speak to fragments of a body; a bare torso and ghostly outstretched arm cross a curtain casting shadows of its own. Packets upon packets, shelves upon shelves converse with a bank of dry earth where detritus leads to a pocket of light. Quiet corners of rooms meet exterior facades, the curves of ceiling ducts are interposed with those of the artist’s body, overhead fluorescent lights eerily illuminate meat set for sale before leading the viewer elsewhere. Here, the hard lines, flights, and concrete constructs of our lives engage in kōrero with things we might deem as softer, quiet, more private: a hand blocks, denies; folds in fabric reveal and conceal the body; putiputi open in full bloom. Heavy black borders serve as intermittent breaths between each scene."...
A publication containing the complete essay Undertow is available at Jonathan Smart Gallery.
Selected works
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Video Stills
Installing...
Emma installing in the front gallery
Emma adjusting her video work...
2024
dual image of outsourced colour slide with black & white medium format photograph, printed from an analog scan on fully archival cellulose paper (Ilford Gold Fibre Pearl)
1320 x 1100mm framed
Exhibited in
HETEROGLOSSIA 2
2024
medium format black & white photograph with artist’s hair and extinct woolly mammoth hair, handwritten text, printed from an analog scan on fully archival cellulose paper (Ilford Gold Fibre Pearl)
1320 x 1100mm framed
Exhibited in
HETEROGLOSSIA 2
2024
dual image of original double exposure medium format slide with black & white medium format photograph, printed from an analog scan on fully archival cellulose paper (Ilford Gold Fibre Pearl)
1100 x 970mm framed
Exhibited in
HETEROGLOSSIA 2
2024
medium format black & white photograph, handwritten text, printed from an analog scan on fully archival cellulose paper (Ilford Gold Fibre Pearl)
1100 x 970mm framed
Exhibited in
HETEROGLOSSIA 2
2024
dual image of outsourced colour slide with black & white medium format photograph, printed from an analog scan on fully archival cellulose paper (Ilford Gold Fibre Pearl)
1000 x 1290mm framed
Exhibited in
HETEROGLOSSIA 2
2024
medium format black & white photograph with artist’s hair and extinct woolly mammoth hair, handwritten text, printed from an analog scan on fully archival cellulose paper (Ilford Gold Fibre Pearl)
410 x 410mm framed
Exhibited in
HETEROGLOSSIA 2
2024
hand-printed black & white photograph with outsourced or original slide
300 x 210mm framed
Exhibited in
HETEROGLOSSIA 2
2024
hand-printed black & white photograph with outsourced or original slide
300 x 210mm framed
Exhibited in
HETEROGLOSSIA 2
2024
hand-printed black & white photograph with outsourced or original slide
300 x 210mm framed
Exhibited in
HETEROGLOSSIA 2
2024
hand-printed black & white photograph with outsourced or original slide
300 x 210mm framed
Exhibited in
HETEROGLOSSIA 2
2024
hand-printed black & white photographs
300 x 210mm framed
Exhibited in
HETEROGLOSSIA 2
2024
hand-printed black & white photographs with outsourced or original slide
300 x 210mm framed
Exhibited in
HETEROGLOSSIA 2
2024
hand-printed black & white photographs with outsourced or original slide
300 x 210mm framed
Exhibited in
HETEROGLOSSIA 2
2024
hand-printed black & white photographs
300 x 210mm framed
Exhibited in
HETEROGLOSSIA 2
2024
hand-printed black & white photographs
300 x 210mm framed
Exhibited in
HETEROGLOSSIA 2
2024
hand-printed black & white photographs with outsourced or original slide
300 x 210mm framed
Exhibited in
HETEROGLOSSIA 2
2024
super 8mm video projection 1/1 sold as a digital file, original reel of film included
6mins 20 secs loop
Exhibited in
HETEROGLOSSIA 2