You’ve Got Mail? / Liz Blackwell
Liz Blackwell / You’ve Got Mail
25 February – 1 March 2014
People are always telling you that change is a good thing. But all they’re really saying is that something you didn’t want to happen at all… has happened.[i]
The first stamp designed in New Zealand was the ‘Newspaper’ stamp. It was issued 1 January 1873 and was valued at half a penny (0.5 cents) and was used to cover the mailing costs of newspapers. Today, postage for a Standard Post letter costs 70 cents or Fast Post $1.40. Of course, in the early 21st century, the price of posting a letter in New Zealand is of little importance to the majority of the population. In January 2013, New Zealand Post announced that they would be halving its delivery schedule from six to three days a week. Not even the telegram, the telephone, or the first cellphones managed to kill the postal service. But the Internet has.
In You’ve Got Mail? Liz Blackwell’s prints of postage stamps act like a metaphor for shifts in communication methods and changes in technologies that have transformed our sense of certainty and the quality of given experiences. Blackwell’s series of commemorative centennial stamps from 1940 acknowledge the implication of such revolutions in technology, co-locating the detail and patina of commercial printing processes from the mid-twentieth century with digital imagery, and in a series of black and white symmetrical images of post-war stamps, Blackwell explores the relationship between traditional photographic processes and cell phone technology.
Liz Blackwell graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from the Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design and completed a Graduate Diploma in Secondary Teaching in 2006. Blackwell is a practicing photographer and Head of Department at the Design and Arts College of New Zealand, tutoring in photography and Fine Arts.
[i] Meg Ryan as Kathleen Kelly in You Got Mail (1998). Directed by Nora Ephron
1936 Commerce Butter 1gb (2013). Archival inkjet print on diajet 1/5, 560 x 914mm POA
1940 Centennial Tasman 2gb (2013). Archival inkjet print on diajet 1/5, 560 x 914mm POA
1940 Centennial Capt. Cook 1gb )2013). Archival inkjet print on diajet 2/5, 580 x 930mm POA
1940 Centennial Capt. Cook 1gb (2013). Archival inkjet print on diajet 2/5, 580 x 930mm POA
1940 Centennial Tasman 2gb (2013). Archival inkjet print on diajet 1/5, 560 x 914mm POA
1935 Kiwi (2013). Resin coated gelatin print fused with digital technology, 240 x 730mm POA
1956 Takahe (2013). Resin coated silver gelatine print fused with digital technology, 420 x 730mm POA
1935 Tuatara (2013). Resin coated silver gelatin print fused with digital technology, 420 x 730 POA
PigeonGram (2014). Archival inkjet print on diajet 1/5, 620 x 750mm POA
1945 Tui 1gb (2014). Archival inkjet print on diajet 2/5, 700 x 600mm POA
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