Russ Flatt, Bicycle, 2010. Inkjet photograph on Hahnemühle Photo Rag, edition of 3 + 1 AP, 75.5 x 96.5cm framed. Courtesy: the artist and Tim Melville Gallery, Auckland.

After returning to Aotearoa New Zealand from New York, where he had been working as a fashion photographer, Russ Flatt (Ngāti Kahungunu) completed a PGDip FA at Auckland University’s Elam School of Fine Arts. He graduated in 2013 having won the University’s Post-graduate Photography Prize.

Flatt’s work addresses notions of identity and belonging – including queer and Māori identities – and his early works evoked a re-imagined past as a way to understand and recognise the present. More recently his practice has expanded to encompass drone and Point Cloud imaging technology, through which he has produced both still photographs and moving image works.

Te ahua, te wa, te atea was first presented at the MTG Napier and in expanded form as Tekau mā rua at Tim Melville Gallery in 2022. It included hawk’s-eye views of significant sites where Ngāti Kahungunu were alienated by the Pakeha settlement of Heretaunga Hawkes Bay.

Survey is an overview of Flatt’s photographic work since 2010 and runs alongside an exhibition of moving image works by ten Māori artists at Te Tuhi, Pakuranga: Takiwā Hou, Imagining New Spaces (until 24 May).

Survey coincides also with the opening of RUSS FLATT: Te ahua, te wa, te atea at the Dowse Art Museum in Lower Hutt (18 May – 03 November).

Opening Event: Wednesday 1 May, from 6pm.

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