THERE THE DANCE IS

Jenny Tomlin & Alex Lindesay

6 - 21 June 2025, Part of the Auckland Festival of Photography

Installation view: There the dance is, Jenny Tomlin, Alex Lindesay, Artor Contemporary 2025

Inspired by Gaston Bachelard’s ‘The Poetics Of Space’ and the themes from the chapter Intimate Immensity ‘There the dance is’ explores elements connected to pinhole photography and poetry.

Jenny Tomlin’s process based practice focuses on seeing the world through various pinhole cameras that she creates. She sees these as imagination machines, often showing what looks like energy or other versions of reality.

Alex Lindesay’s poetry explores themes of light and time which are also key factors in the pinhole process.

Together, both artists worked with a camera obscura, in this case a hydroponic tent with multiple openings that could be adjusted to show multiple fragments of the world outside. This resulted in grid works Garden Obscura works 1 and 2 as well as a mural photogram inside the camera obscura.

The light installation was conceived of to show an element of the process and conceptually combine the two artists work. The colour acetate slide shows the bones of the camera obscura used to create the work Intimate Immensity. Viewers are invited to play with the acetate poems creating multiple outcomes.

Alex Lindesay, Jenny Tomlin, Intimate Immensity, 2025

Interactive light installation using overhead projector and acetate slides

Jenny Tomlin, Garden Obscura, 2025

Paper negatives in camera obscura tent, Silver gelatin fibre contact prints

24x30cm each, Vertical images

Jenny Tomlin is an experimental photo artist and darkroom printer based in Titirangi, Tāmaki Makaurau. Her speciality is pinhole photography and alt-photo techniques of solargraphy and lumen – all lensless processes and always informed or inspired by responses to her local environment. 

She completed a BFA at Elam in 1984 and hasn’t been out of a darkroom since.  After working overseas - she returned to NZ and has run a darkroom printing service for film photographers since 2002 alongside pursuing her own practice, occasionally exhibiting and running workshops in pinhole, solargraphy and darkroom printing.

Installation view, There the dance is, Jenny Tomlin and Alex Lindesay, Artor 2025

Jenny Tomlin,Garden Obscura, 2025

Paper negatives in camera obscura tent, Silver gelatin fibre contact prints

24x30cm each, horizontal image

Alex Lindesay, Poetry Installation view, 2025

Printed on A5 Japanese rice paper

Alex Lindesay was born in Auckland and moved to Sydney, Australia at a young age. His art making has its roots in photography which he has been developing over the last 10 years. In 2020 he returned back to Aotearoa with his wife Kristen and son Remy. They live in Titirangi. Over the last few years Alex has been leaning in to writing his own poetry. Inspired by his Great uncle who also writes poetry Alex has begun to unravel his own history with a curious wondering mind.

Installation view, There the dance is, Jenny Tomlin and Alex Lindesay, Artor 2025

Jenny Tomlin, Keyhole obscura, 2019

Camera obscura, Inkjet print from digital original, 13x20.3cm  

Alex Lindesay, Poetry, 2025

Printed on A5 Japanese rice paper

Alex Lindesay, Jenny Tomlin, Intimate Immensity, 2025

Enquire: hello@artor.nz