A poet with a camera

Seamus Murphy directed and produced the music videos for all 12 tracks of PJ Harvey's latest album, Let England Shake. Murphy, a British photographer known primarily for his work in war-torn countries like Afghanistan, filmed all of the clips in various areas of England using available light, combining still photos and documentary-like video footage. The shots are both quietly naturalistic and eerily incongruous—a skeleton on display in a museum, Harvey performing in a bare room, the ebb and flow of the ocean tide—and they serve to comment on Harvey's own quietly eerie ode to Sunny England.

Holland Electro v Carlo Van de Roer

Carlo Van de Roer recently became the first New Zealand born artist to win the prestigious Jury Distinction Award in the BMW Prize at Paris Photo 2010. His winning work, an aura portrait of Miranda July, was exhibited in Wellington in March 2010. He was represented in Paris by chic M+B gallery from Los Angeles. We succeeded in getting him a small amount of press coverage to acknowledge the award but the moment has largely gone unnoticed on these shores.

No Australasian gallery has ever participated at Paris Photo although a few New Zealand artists have had book signings there, such as Bruce Connew and Harvey Benge. Some work has been done to see New Zealand selected as the spotlight country, however, no success to date. Interestingly Africa is the featured 'country' for Paris Photo 2011.

Pictured: Our new Holland Electro 4500 sensor control vaccum next to Carlo Van de Roer's Blinded by the Light # 1 (Wunderkammer exhibition).