Even before stepping foot inside Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery in the Auckland suburb of Titirangi, I was sold on the idea of Watching Windows. There is something immediately appealing about a show based on the window. I can think of few entities more fundamental to daily life and less celebrated. Symbolically, the window teems with content. As a point of departure for an exhibition, it offers the all-important combination of simplicity and richness—one that Watching Windows consciously exploits.
Curated by Te Uru’s director, Andrew Clifford, in collaboration with artist André Hemer, the show riffs on the window in a variety of ways. Installations, for instance, engage physically with the gallery’s fenestration and the light that enters through it; wall works provide windows on to other realities; a moving image work acts as a sort of electronic skylight. The concise introductory text alludes to the potential of screens connected to the internet to act as portals, relaying pictures from far away. This notion is hinted at by some of the works on display, and the international make-up of the cast further reflects ‘our interconnected digital age’. …
*
Continue reading on Runway Conversations.
