Kate Mitchell in ‘Photosynthesises: Women and the lens’ at Te Uru Waitākere Contemporary Gallery

Kate Mitchell’s work is currently on view at Te Uru Waitākere Contemporary Gallery as part of ‘Photosynthesises: Women and the lens’ curated by James Gatt.

Photosynthesisers: Women and lens is an exhibition of photographs and videos by 41 women artists and collectives from Aotearoa and Australia, including fa`afafine, queer, and trans women, and those with ancestral ties to Aboriginal, Māori, and diasporic communities. Produced between the early 1960s and 2024 by four generations of artists, exhibited works collectively offer cross-cultural and intergenerational perspectives on the social, political, and cultural conditions that impelled their capture. The exhibition title draws on photosynthesis, the process by which plants absorb, transform, and redistribute light energy. Likening this alchemy to that of lens-based practices, Photosynthesisers holds that exhibited photographs and videos transmit sociopolitical energy through a similar adaptation of light. Passed through the lens of one context, light forges images that are preserved for others, forming pleats in time, carrying manifold, often quiet conditions that produce and reproduce history with shifting resonance as time develops.