Interior
Tim Wagg
19.08.2023 - 16.09.2023
On Interior - Eleanor Woodhouse
Interior at Haydens presents a new series of eight works by Aotearoa New Zealand based artist Tim Wagg. In this exhibition, medium format photographs are framed within a silhouette, conveying Wagg’s interest in how domestic spaces come to reflect various aspects of time, place, and the aspirations of those who occupy them.
Housed in slim black aluminium frames, these works depict domestic spaces from Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland held within silhouettes of people sourced from Wagg’s personal archive of phone snapshots and screenshots. Describing these figures, Wagg explains, “There is something ghostly about simplifying these images into silhouettes; they are at once so familiar and so ambiguous.” Despite the hollow nature of silhouette, these spectral forms evoke assumptions, allowing viewers to project their own desires and interpretations onto these simple lines and the unpopulated rooms they frame.
The works in Interior reference an idealised lifestyle as seen in the historic genre of interior painting. Traditionally, an understanding of time and place is achieved through an emphasis on the decorative elements in a particular era and avoiding the depiction of those whose lives play out in these spaces within the paintings. Today, images of the interior are common across various media platforms and are largely positioned as acquisitive, a way of defining and projecting your identity to your friends and followers.
Following on from previous works such as 1991 (2016) and Youth Portrait (2022), which profile real people as a way of defining the conditions we now live in, Interior considers the spaces we have created in response to these. In combining the historic genres of interior painting and silhouette, Wagg offers a visual simplification that complicates our relationship to spaces which would otherwise be easily read, inviting a greater sense of mystery, desire and estrangement.
Tim Wagg (b. 1991, New Zealand) is an artist currently based in Auckland. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) from the University of Auckland’s Elam School of Fine Arts in 2013 and was a McCahon House Resident in 2019. Working across various mediums including video, installation, and digital printing, Wagg’s work explores the intersections of politics, identity and technology within the context of New Zealand. More specifically, his work considers the tangibility and intangibility of archives and histories, examining the visual languages surrounding moments of political upheaval or change.
Tim Wagg
19.08.2023 - 16.09.2023
On Interior - Eleanor Woodhouse
“…We have every century except our own — a thing which has never been seen at any other epoch: eclecticism is our taste; we take everything we find, this for beauty, that for utility, another for antiquity, still another for its ugliness even, so that we live surrounded by debris, as if the end of the world were at hand.”
- Alfred de Musset, Confessions of a Child of the Century, 1836
Interior at Haydens presents a new series of eight works by Aotearoa New Zealand based artist Tim Wagg. In this exhibition, medium format photographs are framed within a silhouette, conveying Wagg’s interest in how domestic spaces come to reflect various aspects of time, place, and the aspirations of those who occupy them.
Housed in slim black aluminium frames, these works depict domestic spaces from Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland held within silhouettes of people sourced from Wagg’s personal archive of phone snapshots and screenshots. Describing these figures, Wagg explains, “There is something ghostly about simplifying these images into silhouettes; they are at once so familiar and so ambiguous.” Despite the hollow nature of silhouette, these spectral forms evoke assumptions, allowing viewers to project their own desires and interpretations onto these simple lines and the unpopulated rooms they frame.
The works in Interior reference an idealised lifestyle as seen in the historic genre of interior painting. Traditionally, an understanding of time and place is achieved through an emphasis on the decorative elements in a particular era and avoiding the depiction of those whose lives play out in these spaces within the paintings. Today, images of the interior are common across various media platforms and are largely positioned as acquisitive, a way of defining and projecting your identity to your friends and followers.
Following on from previous works such as 1991 (2016) and Youth Portrait (2022), which profile real people as a way of defining the conditions we now live in, Interior considers the spaces we have created in response to these. In combining the historic genres of interior painting and silhouette, Wagg offers a visual simplification that complicates our relationship to spaces which would otherwise be easily read, inviting a greater sense of mystery, desire and estrangement.
Tim Wagg (b. 1991, New Zealand) is an artist currently based in Auckland. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) from the University of Auckland’s Elam School of Fine Arts in 2013 and was a McCahon House Resident in 2019. Working across various mediums including video, installation, and digital printing, Wagg’s work explores the intersections of politics, identity and technology within the context of New Zealand. More specifically, his work considers the tangibility and intangibility of archives and histories, examining the visual languages surrounding moments of political upheaval or change.
