South East Asia Travels

I have recently been travelling in Thailand for a month. I had a really amazing time and it was my first time in South East Asia so it was a real eye opener. I took lots of photos on my way and I will upload some over the next few days.

View from our Room in Koh Tao.

A lagoon we climbed to on Railay, Krabi

Long Tail Boat at Tonsai.

Sunset at Tonsai, Krabi.

This is a bay on the west side of Koh Tao, amazing rock formations and precariously positioned Hut.

Waterfall on Koh Phangan, we drove scooters down a very rough dirt road to get here.

The road we took the scooters on.

Long Tail boats on Tonsai Beach, Krabi.

More Exhibition Images

Heres a few more photos from my exhibition the day after the opening. It looks quite different without all the people and food everywhere.

Heres the exhibition title and the corner projection. I utilised the corner of the room to accentuate the motion effect of my video clip.

Exhibition opening!

Heres a few shots from my first Solo Exhibition opening. It went really well and there were lots of good people, good food, and a few wines went down nicely. I sold a few prints which was a bonus and got lots of good comments.

All that preparation works payed off!

Photographer research

Moses Berkson is not your average surf photographer. He chooses to cover the improvised secrecy of surfing’s territoriality—the engineering of paths that lead to places that only true surfers know about. The artist has the ability to evoke the most ephemeral moments of the environment’s varying qualities of light, thus engaging the viewer to question his own notions of actuality and space, as well as universal temporality. Berkson’s first solo US exhibition, Coastal Access at The Constant Gallery, is a document of the photographer’s ongoing relationship with his home state of California. Recognizing that regionalism is ultimately a socially constructed notion, Berkson incorporates intimations of localism and physiologically recluse spatialities of non-places vis-à-vis emerging contentions of authenticity, artificiality and conflation in his captured moments. Without disclosing the locations of these elsewheres, he manifests historical apocrypha amidst the proliferating breeds of the feigning and the desiring. Coastal Access runs November 1 through November 29, 2008.
http://mosesberkson.com/

This guy's work sounds interesting and inspiring for my work. Coastal access is a big issue for us Northlanders and even down here in Dunedin you are starting to see areas of the natural coastline being sold to foreign (and local) people who restrict access to beaches etc. Its a key issue for surfers and anyone who loves the coast.

Other Invite

I think I like this one better, better colours.

Unbound Motion

I've Been working on a solo exhibition for a while now, and this week I have just realised how much I have to do in prepatation for it!!! Heres one of the invites I made for it. the name unbound motion comes from the ideas of freedom and motion that my work is portraying. I have been working on a video piece which I plan to have playing on a loop throughout the exhibition. I'm also showing a few photos, some of which may have appeared on my blog in previous posts. I'm trying to interlink them all in a way so that they aren't just pictures of snowboarding, or snowy mountains, but various other aspects of freedom and motion that I see in my journeys. Basically I'm wanting to show a coherrent body of work that all has continuity, but isn't too repetitive. Anyway I'm still working on it so I hope it all goes to plan.

Spring Shred

Winter has come to an end but there's still plenty of snow to shred. This weekend we went to The Remarkables and had lots of fun riding 'The Stash' all afternoon in the sun. Here's some pics of our last weekend snowboarding in 2008.

Micah (above) and Simon (below) getting some sweet air off this scary log-on-rock feature.



Me hitting the Hutt rail and roof, so fun!



Nows that winters over its probably time to do some actual work to post on my blog!!!

Animated Photo

Here's a link for a small animated clip I made. It was a photo I took while driving past trees in a car. I took the photo using a Canon A1 35mm with B&W film, and then animated in Adobe Photoshop and Premier. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rpwZMmk_Z4

Winter Returns

Heading over to Queenstown for another spring weekend and to our surprise it it was snowing the whole trip over! When we arrived the mountain was shut but we drove up to the Remarkables anyway and did some hiking, made a jump and had a fun day! In some places there was a foot of dry powder which covered the tussock nicely so we were stoked to have the mountain to ourselves!

From the bottom of Homeward bound run.


From the top.





Nice Panoramic view of Queenstown, I havn't seen this much snow all season!


Here's a shot of me slashing the pow, taken By Simon Voyce.

Who ever said Winter is over with snow like this! Epic!

A spring weekend in Wanaka

It's mid September, the snow is melting, the air is warmer, why not head to Wanaka for a late season shred!? This particular weekend the weather didn't look great but we had some nice patches. Saturday was nice, Sunday was a day of blizzard-like wind and rain and being stuck inside confined to the couch, but Monday cleared up nicely and with fresh snow on the hills we decided to head up to Cardrona.

I took my camera and we had a sick day doing a range of fun activities.

Heres some documentation of the weekend.

This is a nice rock drop we found at Cardrona. There was fresh snow and a perfect landing, so we hit it. This is a shot of me taken by Ash Fogelberg. I was using a Nikon d60 with a Sigma 10-20mm lens.

Ash doing a sweet nose snappa

The Cardrona Noodle bar is a strange place, but it has a nice ledge that Sam Coleman was keen to hit, here he is doing a front board.

Here's Sam again hitting Cardrona's 60ft kicker.

All in all we had a sweet weekend riding and we were stoked! Spring riding is fun!

Dunedin Surf Missions.

I always love to go for a morning surf to start my day and if you can brave the cold, (which I barely can) Dunedin is the perfect place for it. I have been trying to take lots of photos from surfing missions because theres always so many opportunities around the Dunedin coastline.


This was a nice day surfing at Aramoana.

August Student Exhibition

Every year Otago University holds a student exhibition and this year I decided to enter a few works. I put 10 pieces in, mostly photos I had recently taken, and a few others.

Heres my display, I sold a few and won the photography award for the photo of the chairlift.

This photo of the Dunedin Skate Comp I also entered in the Iris professional photography competition, didn't win but it was a good experience. 

Snow

I have an obsession with snowboarding and love to play in the snow! I've taken various photos whilst snowboarding and when I'm in snowy places like Wanaka, Queenstown, Whistler and Tahoe.

Heres a few 35mm Black and white prints. I took the Photos at Coronet Peak in Queenstown in winter 2008 on a stormy day.

Screenprinting project 'Urban Poster Wall'

This is a project I did during a Textiles elective in 2007. I have mimicked one of Dunedin City's alleyways where many posters are glued up. These posters are advertising gigs and resent album releases for various bands. I always look at these posters because of my interest in music but I became particularly interested in the way some of these posters are peeled back to reveal fragments of past events. This gives a layering effect of time within the City. I started experimenting with the screenprinting technique using photos I had taken from the alleyways. and screenprining them onto different fabric.

The final result was this piece of brown textured fabric with layers of different screenprinted pieces glued on, some have been peeled back to reveal other layers.



This is a site-specific work and the presentation was important. I chose to stick it to a graffiti covered wall and made it become a part of the wall. It molds to the shape of the wall and from a distance looks like a part of it. I would like to extend this project further and do a large version of it one day, possibly as an installation to be exhibited.

Random stuff

I like messing about in photoshop with photos I have taken, heres a few random ones I have done just for fun, no particular reason.

Shadow Series

This is a series I did in a painting elective last year. I was looking at the shadow as a symbol of the subconscious mind, how sometimes it is uncontrolable and wanders off. I looked at other artists like Salvador Dali, René Magritte and Giorgio de Chirico whose work gave me inspiration and ideas. I was mainly using acrylic on canvas (30x40cm) and the bottom painting was the one I presented as the final work.

A few Wanaka photos

Heres a few Wanaka Photos I have taken over the last few years

whilst living or being on holiday there