Secrets of the Forgotten Tapu: Lloyd Godman - photographic works 1984 to 1986
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When significant landscapes are changed forever it is imperative to understand what has been lost. Past down from generation to generation, stories acted as a means to address loss. Later, images embellished these narratives and then in recent times photographs offered a compelling witness.
However, there is often no record, no images, and little documented local stories, that reference the natural features as they once had been and how these landmarks once impacted on local people.
Blackhead, near Dunedin, New Zealand, was a dramatic headland with stunning columnar basalt rock formations that projected into the Southern Ocean and was threatened by quarrying. In 1995, artist Lloyd Godman realised that significant areas of the headland were about to disappear forever, and he committed to photograph the details of the landmark as often as he was able, producing a valuable archive of what had once been. At the time, the images were assembled into complex composite images and exhibited at various art galleries, which led to an awareness of the immediate threat to the headland. This stimulated a range of interested people to negotiate how a covenant could be drawn up to protect part of the area, which came to pass.
Secrets of the Forgotten Tapu, ( Tapu - meaning sacred place )) presents an extensive series of emotive black and white photographs from Godman’s archive that acts as a witness to the sublime basalt bluffs lost forever to quarrying and the areas that have been protected by an eventual Conservation Covenant. The narrative tells the history of the headland from early Māori and their embedded legends to the importance of the place as a special surfing break and place of solace. It outlines the headlands unique geology and botany. Secrets of the Forgotten Tapu offers an insight into the creative process of working as a photographer with film and darkrooms in a pre-digital age.
The images and text of Secrets of the Forgotten Tapu allow a destroyed landscape to live again.
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Lloyd Godman has always had an interest in the environment and photography. He established and was head of the photo section at the School of Art Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand for 20 years before moving to Melbourne in 2005. He also instigated and helped organize several major arts events. Concern for the environmental is a resilient thread that has connected his many projects. The Last Rivers Song was the first series of work where this concern in the natural environment played a pivotal role, and Secrets of the Forgotten Tapu is a project where he continues to explore environmental concerns in his photography. His current work uses plants as a living medium within the built environment.
In recent years Lloyd has shifted his art practice to work with living plant sculptures and integrating plants into architecture and the built environment.
