Trish Clark Gallery is very pleased to present a solo exhibition by Marie Shannon, her first in Auckland since 2022: a curated selection that elucidates her importance within contemporary New Zealand art history, bringing together vintage silver gelatin photographs, large digital photographs, and a body of moving image works, including two new works. Blurring fact and fiction, Shannon brings her characteristic sharp focus and dry wit to both the quotidian and profound details of domestic life.
Notable works were included in Shannon’s touring survey exhibition, Rooms found only in the home, developed by Dunedin Public Art Gallery in 2018 and toured to Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland, before its planned Australian leg at Sydney’s MCA in 2020 was cancelled due to Covid-19. Others arose out of the Tylee Cottage Residency in 2019, and were first seen in late 2021 at Whanganui’s Sarjeant Gallery, and in her 2022 presentation at the Gallery. Still others have been mined from that treasure trove of the artist’s extant oeuvre.
Shannon’s photographs are made on a large-format camera, resulting in sharp, finely detailed images, hand-printed by Shannon in silver gelatin variously toned with sepia, selenium and gold. She often stages or carefully constructs her photographs, or documents the process of making objects that are then photographed. Shannon is also interested in the narrative or poetic resonance of the single object. Past subjects have included photographs of her son Leo’s sketchbook and love notes; oil pastel installation sketches of her show at Sue Crockford Gallery; an embroidered fabric collage of a Gordon Walters koru painting, and photographs of the plaster cast made as part of the process of her partner’s radiation therapy. Following the death of her partner, artist Julian Dashper, in 2009, Shannon has been cataloguing his works and archive in their shared Auckland studio. From this lengthy process she has gathered the material for her recent text-based video works and related photographs. Her desire to use text in a visual, as well as a narrative context, stems from an interest in the conventions of text titles and credits in movies.
Graduating with a BFA from University of Auckland’s Te Waka Tūhura Elam School of Fine Arts in 1983, Shannon has been critically acclaimed since 1996 in representing New Zealand at Australia’s Asia-Pacific Triennale. That same year she exhibited in Sydney’s Australian Centre for Photography, then in 1998 at New Plymouth’s Govett-Brewster Gallery and Melbourne’s ACCA. In 2000 her work was included in the exhibition Fissures, shown at ACProjects, New York, curated by Connie Butler as part of the series, Five Shows, Five Curators. Her work was included in exhibitions in Melbourne, Sydney, and Amsterdam. Shannon’s survey exhibition was developed and presented by Dunedin Public Art Gallery in 2017, later touring to Wellington, Christchurch and Auckland, while presentation at Australia’s MCA was unfortunately circumscribed by Covid-related museum closures. More recently, the project outcome of a Tylee Cottage Residency Sleeping Near the River showed at Sarjeant Gallery and later, alongside new work, at Trish Clark Gallery in 2022.
Shannon lives and works in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand.
CIRCUIT Marie Shannon and Megan Dunn Artists in Conversation podcast →
Urbis Magazine interview: Marie Shannon in conversation with Federico Monsalve →
