Grant Priest, 'SH49 – lot 4584293 [Kariori Forest]', 2023 (still). Image courtesy of the artist.
Photo Credit
The central plateau of the North Island embodies a history of state-driven interventions to extract value from its unstable pumice soils and harsh environment. This region has been shaped by monumental infrastructure projects: the planting of the Kaingaroa Forest, the construction of State Highway 1, the Tongariro Power Scheme, and the widespread use of superphosphates to boost soil fertility. Such projects relied heavily on prison labour, linking land transformation to systems of punitive control.
These landscapes, altered by state ambition, conceal layers of memory and violence. passthru reflects on the displacements—cultural, ecological, and economic—that these transformations left behind. Shot from within a moving car traveling between Tūrangi and Waiōuru, passthru maintains a single unbroken frame capturing the rear-view mirror and the windshield. This dual perspective juxtaposes the road behind and the sky ahead, reframing the landscape as simultaneously past and future, presence and absence.
Enclosed by various perforated screens that recall infrastructures of control—passthru places the viewer in a space of mediation where access, visibility, and authority are negotiated. In doing so, the work challenges the implied freedoms of the road and the screen, revealing to us the infrastructures that shape the landscape and perpetuate state narratives of productivity, ownership and control.
Opening Hours
- Daily, 9am - 5pm
- Closed public holidays
Address
- 21 William Roberts Road
- Pakuranga
- Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland 2010
The central plateau of the North Island embodies a history of state-driven interventions to extract value from its unstable pumice soils and harsh environment. This region has been shaped by monumental infrastructure projects: the planting of the Kaingaroa Forest, the construction of State Highway 1, the Tongariro Power Scheme, and the widespread use of superphosphates to boost soil fertility. Such projects relied heavily on prison labour, linking land transformation to systems of punitive control.
These landscapes, altered by state ambition, conceal layers of memory and violence. passthru reflects on the displacements—cultural, ecological, and economic—that these transformations left behind. Shot from within a moving car traveling between Tūrangi and Waiōuru, passthru maintains a single unbroken frame capturing the rear-view mirror and the windshield. This dual perspective juxtaposes the road behind and the sky ahead, reframing the landscape as simultaneously past and future, presence and absence.
Enclosed by various perforated screens that recall infrastructures of control—passthru places the viewer in a space of mediation where access, visibility, and authority are negotiated. In doing so, the work challenges the implied freedoms of the road and the screen, revealing to us the infrastructures that shape the landscape and perpetuate state narratives of productivity, ownership and control.
