Auckland Council’s artist in residence, Conor Clarke has been announced a winner in the Renaissance Photography Awards in London.
Scenic Potential, a set of five related ‘landscape’ photographs won her a prize for the best series. Conor is living and working at Waitawa Regional Park as a resident artist so could not attend the prize-giving.
The Renaissance Photography prize is an international award that showcases outstanding photography from emerging and established photographers and is selected by some of the industry’s most influential photography critics. Her winning portfolio is being exhibited at the Getty Images Gallery from 17-28 November 2015.
Conor moved into the cliff-top bach at Waitawa Regional Park in October and has been busy converting an outbuilding into a temporary darkroom. Her residency work will be literally developed on the park.
Conor is very fit from the cycling she does at her base in Berlin so she is coping with the strenuous daily walks admirably. These rambles all over the park are sometimes ‘reccys’ – to establish what she will return to photograph when time of day or the weather are more conducive to what she wants to capture. She has twice had some monstrous visitors in the bay below her bach – a trio of orcas.
She is attuned to the serpentine scars on the land, and the shapes and patterns of landforms, especially the pa. She has also turned her lens to the explosives factory remnants. Gorse, a weed that in some places challenges the revegetation efforts on the park is also featuring in her work.
An exhibition of Conor’s Waitawa work will be held at Two Rooms Gallery during 2016.
Listen to Conor reflecting on her residency experience on National Radio, Standing Room Only.
