Dark Sky | 2012

Published 2012 by Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington.
47 pages
240 x 172mm, softcover, with colour illustrations
With an essay by Geoffrey Batchen
Design by Alice Baxter
Printed by Milne Print
ISBN 978-1-877309-26-7

DARK SKY is an exhibition about photography that takes as its subject the skies above us. Coinciding with the 2012 Transit of Venus, it gathers nearly 90 items ranging from small-scale postcards made by commercial photographers, to large, multipart installations conceived for the occasion by contemporary artists, to digital prints sent from space probes on lunar missions, to highly manipulated images that turn the stars into artists’ drawing devices. Spanning an extended history from 1874 to the present, the show includes works from Germany, England, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, setting out to blur distinctions between art, science and the popular imaginary. Conceived to mark the historic event of the last Transit of Venus any of us will witness, DARK SKY canvasses much more than that single phenomenon. Bringing together an array of ways in which the firmament has been pictured, the show navigates an idiosyncratic path through a rich history.