Western Line 2003
24 May—19 July
The images in Western Line 2003 were captured during a period when Allan McDonald was a frequent user of the train service. He describes the areas surrounding the tracks at that time as a form of terrain vague, which functioned as a semi-wild, unmonitored zone where young people would gather, do their thing, and simply hang out. During that era, Tāmaki Makaurau was undergoing widespread commodification, forcing these “urban gaps” to seek their own means of survival. Having long documented the traces within spaces marginalised by urban development and changing environments, McDonald presents landscapes that offer a response both opposite and somehow strangely similar to the transformations of that time.
