Miranda Bellamy

Miranda Bellamy has a multifaceted artistic practice that consists of sculpture, installation, video, photography and works on paper. Her work often investigates social fantasies and realities, specific environments and the technologies that surround us. This collection of photographs has been selected from the artist’s vast photographic archive. In 2013 Bellamy was selected for the New Pacific Studio residency in the Wairarapa: this provided her with a two week period to concentrate solely on her archival material. It was the preliminary step for Bellamy to bring together a new collection of work that does not involve taking new photographs, but rather finds themes and common threads in pre-existing works. 

Referencing the history of documentary photography, Bellamy’s photographs are often snap-shots of the environments around her. The photographs act as working drawings, taken in an ad hoc way, to test and record ideas for other projects; yet they clearly have artistic weight in their own right. Avail (working), for instance, was a preliminary shot that served as the foundation to a major video work Avail that highlighted the marbled swirls of colour which exist when looking at a close up shot of a bubble. 

This exhibition is presented in conjunction with a major group exhibition at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Sleight of Hand, which includes a new sculptural installation by Bellamy. Fittingly, it was the Wairarapa residency which also inspired the installation, Post Script I, II and III, featured in Sleight of Hand.