Gary McClintock

Space Studio & Gallery
18 Street Hill Street, Whanganui

13 - 24 January 2026

Opening: 14 January, 5:30 pm

Heritage changes over time and a driver of change is UTILITY. The costs associated with retaining buildings have increased. The cost of labour was once relatively cheap making the ornate affordable. Maintaining the ornate is now time consuming and costly. Building materials are often chosen to favour UTILITY and economy over attractiveness. Faced with increasing cost pressures and the reduced UTILITY of older buildings for modern use, many now show signs of disrepair and neglect while some have been demolished.

Once demolished, UTILITY influences how the space is to be used. In many cases this results in a space once filled by a multi-level building becoming a ground level car park.

Where space is used for building, UTILITY often drives the economy of the process. Time consuming building processes give way to the faster warehouse builds where tilt slab concrete provides large blank canvases that cry out for adornment. This call is answered by the taggers and their spray cans. And so starts a battle of patchwork cover ups.

These images were collected during ramblings around Whanganui and other close towns. Images have been abstracted out of scenes that are so easily overlooked. When the four lines of the frame exclude most of the world opportunity emerges. Colour, texture, line, and shape are offered up as a composition challenge and UTILITY gives way to aesthetic.

These images highlight how we retain, repair, recycle, and replace all in the name of UTILITY.