Thread Between Darkness and Light, a photo book by New Zealand artist Stella Brennan, began with the gift of a painting: a depiction of Rangitoto with a mysterious ruin in the foreground. Investigating its painter led Brennan to an 1897 photograph of her great-great-aunt Louise Laurent with her female classmates – students at the same art school Brennan attended a century later. Struck by this uncanny affinity with her previously unknown ancestor, Brennan embarked on a journey of research and revelation. Cold-calling long-lost relatives, she unearthed an archive of Edwardian glass plate negatives, which a cousin had carefully preserved since Louise’s death in the 1960s. Despite being cracked and marred by mould and dirt, Brennan meticulously scanned the 300 fragile plates.
This book delves deeper into these historical images, juxtaposing the passage of time with startlingly contemporary framings and content. On the other hand, the extreme damage sustained by some of the negatives, the cracked glass, peeling emulsion and blooms of mould speak to the time between then and now. It is this tension that animates the project – this superimposition of time and place. An evocative collaborative essay enlarges the historical and material context. Susan Ballard, Professor of Art History at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, Kirsty Baker, Curator at Te Whare Toi, and Lissa Mitchell, Curator of Historical Photography at Te Papa, bring their unique perspectives to a text that breathes life into these spectral images.
- Pages: 120pp, with colour reproduction
- Format: hardcover wrapped printed cloth, section sewn
- Dimensions: 268 x 207 x 15mm
Meet Stella Brennan With an established practice spanning from the handmade to the highly mediated, Stella Brennan prises open history, its losses and possibilities, interrogating colonialism, industrialisation and computerisation.
In 2023 the City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi presented Ancestor Technologies, a major survey exhibition of Brennan’s work which included her new photographic installation Threads Between Darkness and Light. The scope of works in this show queries how technologies of representation alter the ways that we see the work, and how they influence the ways that we mark time and construct histories.
Brennan has exhibited across Australia, Asia, North America, Europe and New Zealand and has been awarded Residencies including at Apex Arts in New York City, and Artspace in Sydney. After graduating MFA from the University of Auckland in 1999, and alongside her personal art practice and exhibitions, Brennan co-founded Aotearoa Digital Arts and co-edited the Aotearoa Digital Arts Reader, the first comprehensive text on digital arts practice in New Zealand
