ZOOM IN ZOOM OUT

March/April 2009 Exhibition.

In December 2008 Google launched Street View, an interesting addition to their maps feature. Images from every public road in New Zealand were taken and uploaded to their website. It allows internet users to zoom down at street level and see actual photographs of their house, their car and 360 degree views of their street. They could zoom in to get a closer look or zoom out again for a wider aspect.

The artist also watches and records images. With her camera, Maxine Williams zooms in with a more compassionate eye on the community; a community she knows well, her community. In her paintings she reveals snippets of life from the streets and roads around Clyde and Alexandra: Kids kick a ball, a woman walks her dog, an old man mows his paddock. Williams subjects are taken from her immediate world and are transformed into iconic images for our times.

“ I am like a voyeur watching from behind the camera capturing people in a moment in time, then returning to my studio to paint them. On my laptop I zoom in and out to check the detail while painting the images. It is an intimate examination under my magnifying tool .” Maxine Williams

Google blur out the people in their images but in these paintings with their white backgrounds reference to place is blurred. It is the people who make up the community who have importance to Maxine and it is this sense of community through the images on her canvases she wishes the wider world to see.