Andy Spain - Ghost Forests Exhibition

Ghost Forests is a photographic and moving image project that explores the ecological histories hidden within New Zealand’s architecture and urban environment. It takes, for example, the relationship between Wellington’s Old Government Building — one of the world’s largest surviving timber (Kauri) buildings—and the forests that supplied its construction material. The project seeks to reconnect architecture with its environmental origins. The photographic prints are printed onto handmade paper containing kauri sawdust. Ghost Forests asks visitors to consider buildings as repositories of environmental memory. The Old Government Buildings can be understood not only as a heritage structures but as a surviving trace of vast forests that no longer exist. The shadow of a living kauri tree becomes both image-maker and subject, creating photographic works that symbolically reconnect a living forest ancestor with architecture constructed from its harvested relatives.

The exhibition is made up of 6 A3 diptych’s and 2 moving image pieces.

About the artist

Andy Spain is a Wellington-based architectural and art photographer whose work explores architecture, cities, landscape, and the ways people inhabit the built environment. Originally from the UK, he has worked as a professional photographer for more than 20 years and has been based in Aotearoa for over a decade, working with leading architects, designers and construction companies throughout the country. Alongside that commercial practice he develops independent photographic and moving-image projects examining place, history and our relationship with the landscape — Every Building on Cuba Street, a photographic survey and self-published book inspired by Ed Ruscha; Urban Stages, Human Tapestries, on Wellington’s streets at night; Sanctuary, an environmental portrait series; and Haruru, on tourism, photography and whenua at Haruru Falls. His recent work increasingly investigates the environmental and colonial histories embedded within architecture, including Ghost Forests. His work has been exhibited throughout the UK and New Zealand and is held in the collection of the Alexander Turnbull Library; Te Kāhui Whaihanga New Zealand Institute of Architects has honoured him with a Presidents Award and the Athfield Cup. He also hosts the podcast Conversations with New Zealand Photographers

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