Blue Field is a new project by Tāmaki Makaurau-based artist Gavin Hipkins. Hundreds of unique cyanotype prints form a constellation of circular shapes within an immersive gridded format. The cyanotype process was invented in the 1840s to reproduce technical drawings and scientific tables. Hipkins’ use of this process extends his camera-less photographic practice. For Blue Field (2022-24), watercolour paper is coated in light-sensitive chemicals then exposed to daylight. Hipkins places wooden painting supports on top of the paper, making traces of overlapping pairs and sets of three objects. The grided structure of the artwork inevitably democratises any hierarchy of individual prints. Instead, each print contributes to a total system.

For three decades Hipkins has explored a range of photographic modes and technical processes, from multipart photogram installations to colour snapshot documentary projects. As art historian Peter Brunt observes, Hipkins is a constantly travelling photographer, “an iconographer of desire, travel, time and … modern communities”, and a tourist within the medium, “a great manipulator of the photographic artifact itself.”

An early multipart photogram installation, The Field (1994-95), was first exhibited in 1995 at the pivotal artist-run gallery Teststrip, on Karangahape Road. Blue Field extends Hipkins’ enquiry into how images create meaning through evolving technologies. Common to these projects is an activation of rhythmic connections through fragmentation and assemblage. Blue Field is primitive photography. In this anachronistic space, circular arrangements reference the camera’s aperture: direct light traces are crafted through an elusive materiality.

This is Hipkins’ second solo exhibition at Michael Lett.

Gavin Hipkins (b. 1968, Tāmaki Makaurau) is an Auckland-based artist who works with photography and moving image. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Auckland and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. He is an Associate Professor of Fine Arts at Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland Waipapa Taumata Rau.

His work has been exhibited widely over the last three decades. Recent group exhibitions and festivals include: Te Ahurei Toi o Tāmaki, Auckland Arts Festival (2024); Recontres Internationales, Paris/Berlin, France/Germany (2023, 2020); CROSSROADS 2022, San Francisco Cinematheque, USA (2022); Internationale Kurzfilmtage, Oberhausen, Germany (2022); and Internationale Kurzfilmtage, Winterthur, Switzerland (2021).

His survey exhibition Gavin Hipkins: The Domain was exhibited at The Dowse Art Museum Te Awa Kairangi ki Tai, Lower Hutt, in 2017. His video installation The Precinct (2018) was commissioned by Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) for the Asia Pacific Triennale of Contemporary Art (APT 9). He represented New Zealand at the 1998 Sydney Biennale and the 2002 Sao Paulo Biennale. His work is included in major public and private collections including the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, the Queensland Art Gallery, and George Eastman Museum of Photography and Film, Rochester, New York.