Calmly situated in a world both abstract and representational, this new body of photographs by Kristin Hatland fluently moves through the familiar and its more surreal inversions. A pair of ice skates sit at rest with their laces cast behind as if animated in full flight. A record of that flight is captured in a roughened patch of ice. Two wiry trees sit on a moody landscape evoking notions of mind and memory drawn from the artist’s Norse heritage. An oncoming wave confronts the viewer in counterpoint to a rocky snow-topped mountain inviting you on.
In each image, we witness the poetics of impermanence as one state moves towards another. Patterns etched in ice are there for but a moment. Sand shaped by the waves tells a story and then washes away to speak a new tale. Like the various shapes of water, Hatland’s images speak of the fluid quality to our capacities for memory and imagination.
Kristin Hatland is a Norwegian-born artist based in Clevedon (Auckland) working with the photographic medium. Equally at home both the digital and analogue realms, Hatland’s practice is philosophically driven and eclectic in its embrace of representational and abstract imagery. Hatland holds a Bachelor of Arts from NorthTec Tai Tokerau Wānanga. Her work has featured in exhibitions in Aotearoa including Metapherein at the Shutter Room (Whangarei, 2015) and as a finalist of the Wallace Art Awards (2012).
