Bio

Bruce Foster’s colour work in the 1980s were meditations on the dialogue between the natural and human-altered environments. The coastline figured prominently in this work but subjects also included other water/land interfaces such as rivers, lakes and canals. This preoccupation continues to the present day.

In the 1990s, with writer Lloyd Jones, he explored cultural rituals around recreation in NZ for the publication, ‘Last Saturday’ (VUP) and the exhibition of the same title at the National Library Gallery, Wellington.

He was one of nine artists on the ‘Kermadec Project: Lines Across the Ocean’, an initiative to articulate the issues facing one of the few pristine ocean sites left on the planet. This work has been exhibited in the Pacific; Tonga, Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and Noumea, in Santiago, Chile, and extensively around New Zealand between 2012 and 2017. His primary contributions were the photography series, ‘Invasive species’ and ‘Mapping the Pacific’, and video documentaries about the voyage and individual artist responses to it.

He began ‘Intertidal’ in 2014, an exploration of environmental impacts on a small stretch of once pristine North Auckland coastline, the Mangawhai Spit, a stark picture of dramatic and irreversible change. ‘Intertidal’ was shown at CEAC and The Vivian galleries and in 2017, at Bowen Galleries, together with a new series, ‘Carbon Ghosts’ – traces of human occupation at the spit over 800 years.

In 2018, with Ashburton Art Gallery Director, Shirin Khosraviani, he initiated ‘The Water Project’, a seminar, road trip and exhibition by thirteen artists to explore water’s centrality in present day environmental and political discussions and its artistic and poetic potential. This exhibition and its offshoots have been shown at Ashburton Art Gallery, Hastings City Gallery, Canterbury Museum and Aratoi Museum of the Wairarapa.

Bruce is currently working on a documentary project.

He is a Master’s graduate from Elam School of Fine Arts where he studied photography and cinema under John B. Turner and Tom Hutchins. He has exhibited widely and has work represented in many public collections. He lives in Wellington, New Zealand.
 

Public Collections

Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki
Waikato Art Museum Te Whare Taonga O Waikato
Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare o Rehua,
City Gallery Wellington
The Dowse Art Museum
Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu
New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade Manatu Aorere