Trish Clark Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Marie Shannon, her first in Auckland since 2011, to coincide with both the 2018 Auckland Festival of Photography and her survey exhibition Rooms found only in the home currently at Adam Art Gallery, Wellington. Shannon’s survey exhibition was developed and presented by Dunedin Public Art Gallery in 2017 and tours to Auckland in 2019. Developed from DPAG’s holdings of the artist’s work and her personal archive, the exhibition brought together the history and current concerns of this important artist.
Short Stories elucidates her importance within contemporary New Zealand art history, marking a departure for Shannon in bringing together a body of moving image works developed over the past eight years, including three new short videos.
Shannon represented New Zealand in 1996 at the Asia Pacific Triennale held at Queensland Art Gallery, and also exhibited that year in Sydney at the Australian Centre for Photography. Two years later Shannon showed at the Govett Brewster Gallery, New Plymouth, and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne. 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.
Auckland-based artist Marie Shannon has been creating delicately intimate, witty and thoughtful works for over thirty years. While the domestic has remained her primary concern, her work has also addressed the artwork of others as a way to investigate the creative process. Since 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 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.
Working with photography as her principal medium, Shannon’s practice also incorporates drawing and video. Her use of a large-format camera and her own hand-printing results in sharp, finely detailed silver gelatin prints, variously toned with sepia, selenium and gold. Shannon is interested in the narrative or poetic resonance of the single object, “using photography to display, or show something and to ask the viewer to pay particular attention to it.”
Link to review of touring survey show at Adam Art Gallery→
Link to Marie Shannon and Megan Dunn Artists in Conversation podcast→
Link to Marie Shannon in conversation with Federico Monsalve at Urbis Magazine→
