Auckland – Love Your City

Photo credit: Jeremy Toth

I was thrilled to be invited to participate in a selection panel choosing images for the Heart of the City’s ‘Love Your City’ Instagram photo exhibition, on display as part of ARTWEEK (11–20 October) at the rear of the St James Theatre on Lorne St. We also have some of these images on display in the foyer of Auckland Art Gallery.

I liked the title of the show. When I learnt that this exhibition would be named, ‘Love Your City’ I knew that it was a welcome, a direction that says to each and every one of us, ‘we care for and cherish this place’.

I reckon that in ‘Loving Your City’ you are making it a place where people want to be. ‘Love Your City’ is an invocation. It's a motto.

Photo credit: Jeremy Toth

The exhibition is an initiative that uses the delights and terrors of social media – in this case it is the wonderful visual thermometer called Instagram. The exhibition was a delight to select because we looked at 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of the Instagram pics that Heart of the City could draw from in the presentation of their exhibition.

The other selectors on the panel were all colleague curators, Ngahiraka Mason (Indigenous Curator, Māori Art, Auckland Art Gallery), Vera May (Assistant Director at AUT University’s ST PAUL St Gallery) and curator, writer and friend Kolokesa Mahina-Tuai.

Our goal was clear, to choose images that show people who care for this place and its myriad spaces. Themes emerged often and these reinforced ideas that the character of ‘Love Your City’ is people and their families, partners, children and friends.

So, Aucklanders (and visitors alike) I hope you get pleasure and fun from looking at every image!

- Ron Brownson, Senior Curator, New Zealand and Pacific Art