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Meanwhere

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posted on 2025-04-09, 05:30 authored by Dane MitchellDane Mitchell
Meanwhere is comprised of 12 large-scale, high-gloss digital c-type photographic prints that cascade down the gallery walls to touch the floor. At first sight they appear like auric fields, impressions of geological stratification, or perhaps ghostly aberrations caught on film (all contexts the artist has used as material in earlier works), yet conversely the photographic medium is employed here for its empirical quality. Meanwhere presents us with an actuality: a direct scan of the entry/exit points of several building doorways. Tilted and enlarged to a scale overbearing to the body, they appear like doorways or portals, or perhaps stand-ins for psychological thresholds. Countless invisible transitions happen across these ordinary doorway spaces in a day, typically without contemplation. At each physical threshold Mitchell has placed a flat-bed scanner across the doorway, the prints document this direct encounter. The specifics of these thresholds are not evident – what they might separate, or connect, and why they have been selected, whether incidental or symbolic. What is clear is the subtle divergence in each image, they are capturing not just the hardware of the doorway, but also invisible fragments of light, dust, and darkness, revealing concealed cosmologies. These doorways are repositories for incidental marks (gouges, scratches, scrapes, dents) borne from the impact of foot traffic across time. Doorways in our current context bare silent witness to the significant impact of imperceptible forces, particularly the risk of contamination between bodies.

History

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NTRO Output Type

  • Original Creative Work

NTRO Output Category

  • Original Creative Work : Visual artwork

Place

Wellington, New Zealand

Venue

Mossman Gallery

NTRO Publisher

Mossman Gallery

Medium

digital c-type prints

Research Statement

A contemporary art project intersecting death studies and photography, investigating thresholds in funeral homes through flatbed scanning. The work questions how institutional spaces process mortality, revealing normally invisible traces of passage between life and death. Large-scale prints force confrontation with these typically avoided transitional spaces and render them architectural. This work innovates through its unconventional application of flatbed scanning technology to funeral home thresholds, creating a new methodology for documenting institutional spaces of death. By transforming utilitarian scanning into a conceptual tool, it reveals invisible patterns of passage and wear at mortality's edge. The work has been exhibited both in this original solo exhibition at Mossman Gallery, but also been in an exhibition that took place in two locations titled Transplant, at Sydney College of Arts Gallery & Knulp Gallery, Sydney, Australia in 2021. The work is also in several collections, namely the Fukutake Collection (Naoshima and Tashima Art Island's family collection).

Size or Duration of Work

12 x 2300 x 1270mm

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