Culture

Mint Gallery
Exhibited until 23 September 2014

Mint Gallery’s most recent exhibition, Au, features an exclusive display of photographs taken by owner/curator of Mint Murray Eskale and five digital prints from Dunedin artist Tara Douglas, who has previously exhibited “Karucha Shoku” and “Blossom” at the gallery.

The exhibition is curated by Mint Gallery owner Murray Eskdale and exhibits some of his distinctively large photographic works (printed on aluminium) that capture his perception of the urban landscape that is Shanghai. Tara's contribution to Au is an evolution of the Japanese-inspired sculptural and photographic works seen in these exhibitions. Aesthetically, the photographs do not align in any way, but each similarly share Asian culture as a subject.

In Murray’s images, the photographs show the urban spaces of Shanghai, from inside shopping malls, to capturing the great financial district, Lujiazu. His images are crisp and clean, effectively capturing his somewhat mechanised impression of Shanghai. Each of his images represents themes of urban life, concentrated by excess, mass production, consumption and an inherent detachment from the natural world.

The first image captures what appear to be apartment buildings in central Shanghai, which each look like replicas of one another. The concrete buildings fill the composition against the blue-sky background, leaving only one strip in the middle of the photo that is bare without a building occupying its space, which allows the viewer to get a breath of the background. There is such a strong juxtaposition between the natural and man-made elements within the photo, one cannot help but align such a contrast to that of the struggle of the modern man who is endlessly trying to make sense of the urban world against the natural.

My favourite image of Murray’s is the clever capturing of Lujiazui. Since the early 1990s, Lujiazui has been specifically developed as a new financial district for Shanghai. It is located on the east side of the Huangpu River in Pudong, and sits directly across the river from the old financial and business district of the Bund.

Murray took the image from the East side of the river, staring at the city against the skyline, and the image is strikingly surrealistic. The image is divided into three horizontal sections on the photo plane, and each is symmetrical to the other, so the lines look clean and the image is balanced. The bottom section is of the water in the foreground, the middle section displays the concrete jungle that is Lujiazui receding into the background, and the top section is blue sky, which again is in stark juxtaposition to the city skyline it is compressing.

What is most interesting about the image, however (Murray had to explain this to me as I thought I was looking at a floating city), is that he captured the image at just the right moment – as a boat was passing along the river, in front of the city on the skyline, it aligned with what appears to be the bank of the river beneath the city and, surrealistically, it looks as though the city is indeed floating on water; I think it is quite a remarkable image for its purely surrealistic properties, which are both confusing and convincing.

On the other wall of the gallery, Tara Douglas’ five images, “In Praise of Shadows, I–V,” are displayed. Each image is a manipulated version of the other, capturing a different moment, angle or composition of the artist and her paper blossoms. In traditionally Japanese colours – red and black and white, with infusions of pink, – the photographs are subtle, authentic and playful.

With Asia seeming to be Murray’s point of interest this month, Tara’s works tie in well with his own oriental photographs. If you haven’t seen them already you should pop into Mint for a look – Shanghai looks fascinating, and even more so in the way that it has been so artfully captured. Ask to see Murray’s Europe prints if you go into Mint as well – they are equally as brilliant.