Courtesy: the artist and Sanderson Contemporary Art, Auckland.

Sanderson are pleased to present a new solo exhibition by Mickey Smith – NEW OUTLOOK. This new body of work is a continuation of Smith’s ongoing project Volume, which documents bound periodicals and journals in public libraries.

Smith’s photography is a striking and poignant reflection of contemporary times through her documentation of simple, provocative titles found on library shelves around the world, and most recently in Aotearoa’s libraries.

NEW OUTLOOK explores the current atmosphere of post-pandemic Aotearoa. The books she has documented are not touched, artificially lit or manipulated — rather composed by the librarian and found by the artist in stacks — left as positioned by the last reader. Smith’s playful use of language and scale transcend the spines on which they appear to create conceptual, anthropological works, which document a significant moment in time, and indeed in Aotearoa’s history.

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