June 24 2010
Wayne Barrar – An Expanding Subterra
posted by Steven Shaw at 2:54 pm
Wayne Barrar – An Expanding Subterra
If you’ve been lucky enough to stop in at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery over the past couple of months you might have seen this outstanding exhibition by prominent NZ landscape photographer Wayne Barrar. An Expanding Subterra, which runs until this Sunday 27 June, looks at man’s intrusion and impact on underground spaces, and features mines where resource gathering is still very much active, subterranean spaces that have been converted to habitats, research or storage facilities and corporate and public areas.
Barrar worked on this collection for over seven years, taking in commercial, industrial and domestic spaces in New Zealand, Australia, France and the USA. He presents former opal mines in South Australian that are now underground homes, underground boardrooms and other corporate use spaces from the USA and even tunnels carved by NZ miners in France during World War I that bear directions to Auckland, Wellington and other NZ cities.
His photographs contrast the rough walls of underground caverns with the smooth lines of man-made objects and purpose built spaces. It’s a fascinating insight into an environment into which many of us will never venture, and it conjures up all those unsettling images, from Dante’s Inferno to Orpheus and his journey to the Underworld, to Alice disappearing down the hole for her Adventures in Wonderland — for me even that creepy nuke-worshipping scene from Beneath the Planet of the Apes sprang to mind.
An Expanding Subterra is also available as a beautiful hardcover book, containing 84 plates and essays — check it out here. And for more information check out the website at Dunedin Public Art Gallery