South of no North

South of no North: Laurence Aberhart, William Eggleston, Noel McKenna (8 March–5 May 2013) brings together three artists whose works are connected by an interest in the vernacular, a regional sense of place and a similar visual sensibility.

All three artists create intimate-scale works and employ centrality in their compositions. The subject matter ranges from architecture, environments and signs to people and interiors, images captured on travels across America's Deep South, New Zealand's North Island and Australia.

Eggleston and McKenna produce colour snapshot-like images while Aberhart's toned black and white silver gelatin contact prints engage with a stricter formality.

As a young artist in the early 1980s, McKenna was struck by Eggleston's images and their focus on the commonplace. One of the exhibition's highlights, Untitled (Memphis) (1970), is an iconic image from Eggleston's early work featuring a tricycle that looms gigantically, dwarfing all around it and adopting the view of a child.

McKenna taps into child-like wonder too through his series of paintings of 'big things' such as the Big Pineapple, Big Orange or Big Penguin — a very Australian civic obsession.

Aberhart's portrait of his daughter titled Kamala, Lyttelton, September 1981 (1981) reflects on being a child and the swift passing of life. His gaze often falls on things in the process of disappearing, such as childhood or the built environment. McKenna first discovered Aberhart's photographs in the early 1990s.

Of the work of all three artists, MCA Curator Glenn Barkley said: 'They are akin to short stories where emotions and narratives are condensed into rich and provocative sensations. And while they do reflect the everyday world, they also make manifest the power of art to alert us to the wonder and poetry that is all around us.'

South of no North:
Laurence Aberhart, William Eggleston, Noel McKenna