Darren Glass's Belly to the Ground includes 90 photographs made using a Warehouse frisbee (aka Cosmo flying disc) modified into a pinhole camera.

As the camera spins it records the fixed point of the sun. Perfect (usually unattainable) flights result in idealised, circular forms. Fine days give wiry, linear circles. Clouds cause blurry orbs. The higher the sun in the sky, the smaller the resulting circle. Darren Glass's Belly to the Ground includes 90 photographs made using a Warehouse frisbee (aka Cosmo flying disc) modified into a pinhole camera.

As the camera spins it records the fixed point of the sun. Perfect (usually unattainable) flights result in idealised, circular forms. Fine days give wiry, linear circles. Clouds cause blurry orbs. The higher the sun in the sky, the smaller the resulting circle.Occasionally more idiosyncratic effects occur when films come unstuck or continue recording after the camera has fallen to the ground. Glass has ambitions to eventually produce 365 "Cosmo" works. The flights usually take place in underpopulated spots where the necessary chase after the cam is less likely to be witnessed.

Darren Glass studied photography at Elam, gaining a BFA in 1993 and an MFA in 1999. The unknown, basic and miraculous aspects of the work of early photographers, such as Fox Talbot, have always fascinated him. The Cosmo flying disc was in part inspired by the work of the inventor Jules Marey, especially his efforts to test stresses on French soldiers backs by photographing then with large dots attached to their elbows. Making cameras is Glass's way of losing control and capturing sights that are otherwise invisible. The Cosmo is the successor to the Roly-Poly, a 26 aperture, tyre-shaped pinhole camera that the artist has rolled into the crater of Mt Eden and other Auckland volcanos.

The title of the exhibition is a translation of ventre a terre, the name for the style of painting horses in motion before the C19th photographs of Muybridge confirmed that they always keep one foot on the ground.

Exhibition runs until February 26

For further information please contact Anna Miles.

Anna Miles Gallery
Suite 4J, 47 High St, Auckland
(09) 377 4788, (021) 47 10 47
Gallery hours: Thursdays & Fridays 11-6,
Saturdays 11-4 & by appointment
www.annamilesgallery.com