Congratulations to Kate van der Drift who has won the Highly Commended Award with the Molly Morpeth Canaday Award 2024.
Van der Drift is a contemporary photographer living and working in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland and Whāingaroa Raglan. The artist has a particular interest in recording and highlighting the relationship between humankind and our natural habitat through ecological studies of the land using analogue film processes.
Van der Drift’s submission ‘Esk River (after Gabrielle)’ is a cameraless exposure made in the Esk awa after Cyclone Gabrielle had devastated parts of the North Island of Aotearoa in 2023. The area where the film was exposed was populated with sediment-covered fermenting apples.
‘The process was a durational accretion; the interaction between river water, fermenting apples and potentially toxic sediment with an unexposed filmic substrate. I see the trace on the film being a form of writing or drawing by the whenua (land) carried by water as it moves from its original resting place.’
Van der Drift describes the work not as ‘a landscape depiction but rather the landscape depicting itself’. In some areas, the negatives surface is peeling apart, in a state of decay and transformation.
The judges stated:
‘The way the process allows water gathered from the swollen river, polluted with sediments and fermented apple remains, to run across the unexposed film, creates its own dramatic imagery without the need for an actual camera. It is direct, dramatic and compelling.’
In 2022, van der Drift completed her Masters at Elam School of Fine Art. She was the winner of the Uxbridge Malcolm Smith Gallery Art and Ecology Award (2020) and the Stoneleigh New Zealand Artist Grant (2018)
Congratulations to Kate and all artists involved
@mmcaward
Van der Drift is a contemporary photographer living and working in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland and Whāingaroa Raglan. The artist has a particular interest in recording and highlighting the relationship between humankind and our natural habitat through ecological studies of the land using analogue film processes.
Van der Drift’s submission ‘Esk River (after Gabrielle)’ is a cameraless exposure made in the Esk awa after Cyclone Gabrielle had devastated parts of the North Island of Aotearoa in 2023. The area where the film was exposed was populated with sediment-covered fermenting apples.
‘The process was a durational accretion; the interaction between river water, fermenting apples and potentially toxic sediment with an unexposed filmic substrate. I see the trace on the film being a form of writing or drawing by the whenua (land) carried by water as it moves from its original resting place.’
Van der Drift describes the work not as ‘a landscape depiction but rather the landscape depicting itself’. In some areas, the negatives surface is peeling apart, in a state of decay and transformation.
The judges stated:
‘The way the process allows water gathered from the swollen river, polluted with sediments and fermented apple remains, to run across the unexposed film, creates its own dramatic imagery without the need for an actual camera. It is direct, dramatic and compelling.’
In 2022, van der Drift completed her Masters at Elam School of Fine Art. She was the winner of the Uxbridge Malcolm Smith Gallery Art and Ecology Award (2020) and the Stoneleigh New Zealand Artist Grant (2018)
Congratulations to Kate and all artists involved
@mmcaward
February 19, 2024
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