Beyond Nowhere

Beyond Nowhere brings together highlights from the past ten years of Joanna Langford’s creative practice. Over the past decade Langford has created sculptural installations for many major public art galleries in New Zealand. This survey presents ten of these installations, reconstructed for exhibition at Pataka, including Langford’s most recent work completed during her tenure as the 2011 Frances Hodgkins’ Fellow at the University of Otago. The Before Lands 2009, created for her exhibition at Gertrude Contemporary Artspace in Melbourne, is shown for the first time in New Zealand.

In just seven years since she graduated from the University of Canterbury with a Master of Fine Arts degree, Langford’s work has attracted considerable critical acclaim both nationally and internationally. Langford creates extraordinary imaginary landscapes and cityscapes from the simplest of materials. Like a modern-day alchemist she magically transforms the mundane into the remarkable: recycled plastic shopping bags become cloudscapes; disposable bamboo skewers become spindly skeleton towers and scaffolding; discarded computer keyboards become cityscapes.

Langford’s work is inspired by landscapes – especially romantic ones with magical and mythical possibilities. While there are overt references to cloud-filled skies and volcanic outcrops in her work, her fantastical landscapes are invaded by architectural structures that speak of the urban built environment. The landscape of her childhood in Gisborne remains central to her work, but her travels to exotic, otherworldly places in Iceland, Peru, Turkey and Scotland have also been a rich source of inspiration.