Posts Tagged ‘Exhibition’

NZ Government Supports Revolution!

NZ Executive Offices & Parliament, Wellington (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today I had a meeting with staff from the International Development Group at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Wellington.

I have been talking with them for some months now about the various projects that they fund and oversee in SE Asia as part of the NZ overseas aid effort. Today I met with them for a pre-trip briefing and discussion which was really helpful and I am grateful to all concerned for taking the time to do that for me.

I have a long list of projects and contacts that they have been in touch with and obtained permission for me to visit – a list so long that it might take me more than one visit to fit them all in – and that does not include projects in Thailand and Laos where I am not going on this trip (but am already planning for the future).

Most of the projects are about agricultural development, education, climate change, tourism, disaster preparedness and human rights issues and I am very much looking forward to meeting the staff on the ground and seeing some of the work first hand. I have also been invited to call on the NZ Ambassador whilst I am in Hanoi as he is interested to hear about my project, so I will of course be doing that.

The team at MFAT were also keen to see whether they could help find a way to get the exhibition over to Wellington at some point which I would also like to see happen, so anyone reading this in Wellington, make sure you follow the blog to get news of that!

One of the great things about New Zealand is that the relatively small size of the population, and hence government, makes direct access like this more feasible than it would be in say the USA. I’m very grateful to MFAT for their support and help with this and have promised to go back in to see them on my return to do a slideshow and talk about the trip.

MFAT also administer Safe Travel which is a website for Kiwis abroad to register their travel plans and contact details on so that help can be better provided to them in an emergency. The staff at MFAT reminded me to use the service as part of trip safety and I pass that on to all NZ readers – it is a great site with copious travel information about security and health as well, so make use of it.

(Note: the names of the staff at MFAT have been deliberately omitted for security reasons.)

So Why Re-Invent The Wheel? Part 2

As I said in Part 1 of this two part post, I have been asked why I chose this particular focus.

To remind you, I started out with a very broad focus, wanting to look at the human face of progress after conflict in SE Asia. As the project developed, I began to realise that I could not realistically encompass that broad a subject into a single meaningful body of work that would make sense to the viewer.

In SE Asia, Buddhism is one of the most common religions and in Buddhism the Wheel of Life is an important tenet of belief. So that more spiritual form of wheel was also in my mind when I was thinking about what to name the project. The Wheel of Life is a mandala – a complex picture representing the Buddhist view of the universe.

Officially, Vietnam is an atheist country although Buddhism is one of six religions officially recognised there; Cambodia is principally Buddhist and the Philippines predominantly Christian although Buddhism is practiced there also.

I think that the concept of the Wheel of Life is something most people can at least understand and conceptually it works well to illustrate the cyclical nature of human history, with SE Asia moving around the figurative wheel from an area of conflict to an area of peace and prosperity. The boundary between the two is where I want to find my images.

I also wanted something that would work well over a variety of media as well as being suitable as a title for the exhibition in October. It is a challenge to think of something that will work on websites, on posters, in magazine articles, in advertisements and in books – perhaps even on T Shirts.

English: The Bhavacakra (Sanskrit; Devanagari: भवचक्र; Pali: bhavacakka) or Wheel of Becoming is a symbolic representation of continuous existence proces in the form of a circle, used primarily in Tibetan Buddhism. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If you are reading this and have any thoughts about what other wheel related subjects I might seek in SE Asia, please feel free to chime in below in the ‘Comments’ and let me know what you think!

So Why Re-Invent The Wheel? Part 1

I have been asked why I chose this particular focus.

Well, I started out with a very broad focus, wanting to look at the human face of progress after conflict in SE Asia. As the project developed, I began to realise that I could not realistically encompass that broad a subject into a single meaningful body of work that would make sense to the viewer.

Working with my creative support team over a number of weeks, we went through a number of iterations of smaller concepts that fit within the overall wish to show how society and economics have progressed in the SE Asian region following the many decades of various conflicts. Whilst each iteration seemed like ‘the one’, anyone who has undertaken this sort of work will know that today it can seem like you have cracked it and you crawl into bed after a long day convinced you have it sorted only to wake the next day with a new idea that seems (to you at least!) to make yesterday’s work redundant.

Eventually I refined it down to a body of work that would examine the progress in the context of wheels. Wheels are everywhere and affect every thing in countries such as the ones that I am shooting in: from a sack barrow to a Honda Dream to a Jeepney to a train, a bus or a water wheel in field. Such a simple thing is the wheel, yet imagine the difference it has made and continues to make.

The oldest known wheel discovered to date was found in Europe and dated to about 5,500 years old. It is fascinating to me that – assuming that was the first wheel ever (and of course it wasn’t) mankind has been making use of that invention every day for over 2 million days….! Just think of all the events and people that have passed through our world in that time.

So, I will explore anything and everything through the lens of my Nikons but with a common thread of wheels. That does not mean that there will be one in every image of course. We will really be following the stories of how the wheel changes the lives of individuals and communities in such ways as facilitating access to education, medical care, markets for goods and so on.

The wheel is one of the simplest and most common things created by human beings: the uses it has been put to and continues to be put to are legion. Yet we take it for granted every day, simply relying on it to move us, our goods and our families around without really taking note.

If you are reading this and have any thoughts about what other wheel related subjects I might seek in SE Asia, please feel free to chime in below in the ‘Comments’ and let me know what you think!

Honda Dream (Photo credit: JustinJensen)

Exhibition Stands

Strong winds in the Cook Strait produce high waves, and they erode the shore as shown in this image. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So at the moment we are working through designing and costing the construction of the wooden base stands that the prints will be hung on.

The overall length of the exhibition will be 60 metres, reaching about 1.5 metres above ground level. I have roughed out a sketch based on some research; it was hard to find much detail about the subject though. I guess outdoor exhibitions are not so common and often curated by large organisations such as museums and so on, which would have their own departments to build such things.

We are now looking into costing the timber needed and once we have that, we can look at talking to people about sponsorship for the materials and labour involved in it. Given the environment, it is important that it is properly built to survive the wind, rain and so on that is common here in October: we get the Roaring Forties very strongly at that time of year here in NZ, so often 3 or 4 weeks of pretty blowy weather. The last thing we want to see is thousands of dollars of prints cartwheeling off down the road!

This means we need to ensure that the structure is well fixed to the ground, as the surface area will be large and act like a sail. We will probably use a combination of steel bars with hooked ends driven into the ground and heavy sandbags for backup.

It’s not until you begin working on a project such as this that you discover many of the small but important things that you need to make sure are dealt with for a successful outcome! I will report on more of them as we go along – and keep you informed about the exhibition stands too! Photos will be posted once we get into the construction phase later in the year.