Mickey Smith - Sacrosanct: Preview Catalogue

Sanderson are pleased to present the exhibition Sacrosanct - an evolution of Mickey Smith’s award-winning photographic series Volume and an expansion on the artist's decades-long inquiry into the physical and social significance of literary texts and archives.

This new body of work shifts the artist’s iconographic survey from bound periodicals in public stacks to the uncanny terrain of centuries-old religious manuscripts. By documenting these ancient volumes with forensic intimacy, Smith highlights the anthropological importance of archaic spiritual texts and the ways in which they have become symbols of the layers of time, of culture and place.

Photographed in The Chained Library of Hereford Cathedral, UK, and the Strahov Library, Prague, the artist maintains her strict ‘as found’ methodology throughout—where subjects are never touched or artificially manipulated—they are captured as they exist in situ.

Read the full essay by Nadine Rubin Nathan here

This exhibition is part of the Auckland Festival of Photography