Pūrātoke [To Glow and Gleam] 01

Madison Emond

21 August – 9 September 2023

On the banks of the Kaiwharawhara Awa at Ōtari-Wilton’s bush, the pūrātoke live in constellations. In the darkness of night, hundreds of tiny, bright blue lights form celestial signs that guide me, silently, further down the track. When I look closely, the world encompassed by the bright blue glow is intricate; wet, spherical, translucent chains hang gently from the wet earth. Delicate moss, fern and decaying plants frame or hide the pūrātoke from my view. I feel so large, looming beside each worm as I watch them tend to their delicate and radiant homes.

I carefully place the long, unwound roll of medium format color film over the pūrātoke. Out of fear or humility, they dim their light. I wait patiently for them to warm to the idea of making this image with me. My hands rest on each end of the film, far apart from one another, holding the film to the bank. For fifteen minutes all my strength lives in my fingertips. Gradually, an image bathed in damp luminosity is born.

This image is a part of a larger project-in-progress Emond is developing with the Kaiwharawhara Awa here in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. The Kaiwharawhara Awa is currently being advocated for to receive legal personhood status, like Te Urewera, the Whanganui river and Mt. Taranaki. Emond's project is engaging with this concept by enabling the awa to photograph herself and the environment she supports. Emond's final exhibition of this body of work will be at Twenty Six Gallery in Newtown: October 10 - 15.

Madison Emond is an intermedia artist whose practice focuses on interactions between people and land. She uses the photographic process as a method of gaining a greater understanding of the physical and spiritual constitution of Earth.

Emond received a Fulbright Award for her photography and traveled to Aotearoa New Zealand to complete her year-long award in January 2023. In Pōneke | Wellington, NZ, she is an artist-in-residence with the Whiti O Rehua MFA Program at Massey University and a member of Te Waituhi ā Nuku: Drawing Open research and artist collective.

She has exhibited across the northeast of the USA and internationally at Howard Greenberg Gallery (Manhattan, NY), Photo + Sphere Festival (Asheville, NC) and Space Place Gallery (Nizhny Tagil, Russia).

She graduated from Bard College in 2018 with a Bachelor of Arts in Photography. She previously lived in Providence, Rhode Island where she served as the Studio Manager of AS220 Community Studios, a collection of creative workspaces offering local artists affordable access to a community printshop, fabrication lab, darkroom and media arts lab.

Madison Emond website: madisonemond.com