Wayne Barrar exhibition to open at Museum

For the first time Barrar’s recently completed portfolio of commodified mined spaces and the architecture of the underground will be showcased to the public.

More than 50 images, most reprinted for the first time at a sumptuous scale, complete this exhibition in a stunning photographic experience.

Wayne Barrar, a leading figure in New Zealand photographic circles, has been challenging audiences to think about land use, place and borders for the last 30 years. Having travelled through New Zealand, Australia, France and America over the past seven years, Barrar has been building up an archive of the commercial, industrial and domesticated world that lies underground.

Wayne Barrar: An Expanding Subterra takes audiences into uncanny spaces where huge areas have been allocated to the storage of post-capitalist materials, such as digital and analogue archives, film stock and even nuclear waste. These works explore issues around the politics of space and, in particular, ideas around access to these zones.

They reveal how easy it is for individuals, governments and businesses to control, define and measure our sense of place. It is Barrar’s awareness of, and ability to access these repositories that will shift understandings of what landscape means today.

The exhibition is on display at Rotorua Museum from 25 February to 27 May 2012.

Entry to the exhibition is included with admission, which is free for Rotorua residents with proof of residency.