MAX BULL-CROSSAN
Nothing to see here

Stepdown is delighted to present Nothing to see here, the long-awaited debut solo exhibition by local artist and photographer Max Bull-Crossan, featuring a new series of tricolour cyanotype photographic prints.

Through acts of wilful visual redaction, Bull-Crossan is interested in summoning a redress to present-day ideas around photographic-based truth. The deliberate absences within his photographs represent an act of questioning and resistance, particularly to the ever-growing blind spots of communal memory and critical engagement. With screens burning black rectangles into all of our pockets and social media insidiously worming its way into our minds and lives, we risk, more than ever, mistaking images for reality. In these works, Bull-Crossan explores the instilled fear that we've learnt to trust a camera before our own eyes, engaging in foregone arguments over the legitimacy of a photo or whether somebody's tampered with it, while ignoring the fact that a photo itself is already a tampering of time.

Throughout this series, Bull-Crossan documents mundane urban and rural landscapes across Te Matau-a-Māui – places we've all visited or driven past, but learnt to ignore through familiarity and routine. But with something missing at the heart of each, do you truly believe there's nothing to see here?

Exploring an offshoot of the alternative cyanotype printing process, Bull-Crossan layers multiple toned prints to create near-full-colour images on watercolour paper. The results are a painterly and almost uncanny valley representation of light and colour, challenging our engagement with what lies around us, so that we might again see clearly, with plain, unmediated eyes.

A cyanotype photography workshop with Max Bull-Crossan will also take place. Further details to come.

Opening Celebration: Friday 27 September・5pm
All welcome.