The Passing

F4 Collective (The artists) + Maree Sheehan (Composer) + Tudor Collins (1898–1970), photographer + Shaun Higgins (Curator of Pictorial at the Auckland War Memorial Museum)

Wallace Art Collection, Pah Homestead, Auckland

https://artnow.nz/exhibitions/the-passing

21 May – 23 June, 2019

Auckland Festival of Photography

Pictorial curator Shaun Higgins, sound artist Maree Sheehan and F4 Art Collective have collaborated to re-interpret the work of Northland photographer Tudor Collins (b.1898, Northland, d.1970, Auckland) to create this installation.

Intended to function together toward the production of meaning or interpretation, their work occupies two rooms: the video and soundscape in one room; an assembly of collages, a large scale print from a Collins image, an original Collins self-portrait and the story of his archive in another room. These are not individual art works – they are parts of the whole.

Self-taught photographer and Northland farmer and bushman, Collins was also a freelance photographer, commissioned by the Weekly News to cover events such as the Napier earthquake in 1931 to the 1953 royal visit in Fiji. From 1924, he and his wife Annie ran a business in Warkworth which included wedding and local event photography, selling electrical supplies and even running a petrol station. In addition to paid jobs, Collins photographed the things that interested him.

The extraordinary story of the recent rediscovery and rescue, and subsequent digitised archive of the large body of work (over 50,000 negatives) is told.