'A Serious Girl' captures teen hopes and dreams

Roberta Thornley's exhibition 'A Serious Girl' is on at Sarjeant on the Quay.
PHOTO: Bevan Conley

ON SHOW: Roberta Thornley began working on her exhibition A Serious Girl when she was artist-in-residence at Tylee Cottage.

Roberta Thornley's latest exhibition deals with a teenage girl confronting her immediate future.

But there's also a nod to Whanganui's artistic history buried behind A Serious Girl which opens at Sarjeant on the Quay on Friday.

The show is the product of work Thornley began as artist-in-residence at Tylee Cottage.

Originally from Auckland, the photographer, took up the six-month residency in 2015 but has ended up staying in Whanganui.

"It was the history of photography in Whanganui that really drew me to do the residency and to become part of a lineage," Thornley said.

"The likes of Andrew Ross, Laurence Aberhart, Anne Noble and Ann Shelton, photographers that I really admired when I was growing up, had done this residency.

"For me Whanganui was always a photography town. It was always how I'd thought about it before I'd even come here.

"I think the Sarjeant was the second gallery in the world to start collecting photography."

A Serious Girl follows a teenager, Millie, in the months between leaving school and heading off to Denmark to purse gymnastics.

"So she's at this quite lovely moment and I think it's even more lovely that she's in this small town in New Zealand where she's on the cusp of going on this big adventure overseas for this pursuit that she's really very good at.

"It's portraiture but it's also about a sense of place as well."

Thornley originally planned to photograph several teenagers for the exhibition but chose to focus only on Millie.

"I thought I can't shoot them all and I wouldn't have been able to get to the depth I wanted to."

But she plans to continue the project beyond the exhibition with the other subjects.

"Basically the idea is that I'm working with this age group that is at this time before they might become professional sports people and they're in that teenage space when they've got all these hopes and dreams and desires.

"The idea is just to capture them in this moment."

Thornley has always enjoyed working with teenagers.

"I'm just intrigued and interested in that moment in time.

"But that relationship with how I've photographed teenagers has changed.

"When I was photographing them when I was in my early 20s I was able to clearly relate to that time.

"As I've grown older it's more of a nostalgia. You realise it's such a finite moment in time."

The title, A Serious Girl, came from a work by Edith Collier, the Whanganui painter who moved overseas in 1913 when she was in her twenties to pursue her talent.

"What is interesting is that so much has changed for girls now," Thornley said.

"When Edith came back she was condemned for the work she did even though it was very much what was happening overseas at that time."

*A Serious Girl opens on Friday (June 2) at the Sarjeant on the Quay and runs until mid-August.

On Saturday at 11am Thornley will be discussing the work in conversation with Sarjeant curator & public programmes manager Greg Donson at the gallery.

By Zaryd Wilson
Wanganui Chronicle 3/6/17