Bio

Bruce Foster is a Master’s graduate from Elam School of Fine Arts where he studied photography and cinema. He has exhibited widely, including moving image works, and has photographs represented in many public collections.

Bruce has also photographed internationally for a wide range of publications including the expedition, The Sindbad Voyage for National Geographic Magazine. He is the principal photographer for numerous books including: Stockman Country, Faces of the River, Last Saturday, Citizen of Santiago, and The Lobster’s Tale.

His first feature film, SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION: Songs For Barry Brickell will premiere in the 2024 DocEdge Festival.

He lives in Wellington, New Zealand.

DETAILS

In the 1990s, with writer Lloyd Jones, he explored cultural rituals around recreation in NZ for the publication, ‘Last Saturday’ (VUP) and the exhibition of the same title at the National Library Gallery, Wellington.

He was one of nine artists on the ‘Kermadec Project: Lines Across the Ocean’, an initiative to articulate the issues facing one of the few pristine ocean sites left on the planet. This work has been exhibited in the Pacific; Tonga, Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and Noumea, in Santiago, Chile, and extensively around New Zealand between 2012 and 2017. His primary contributions were the photography series, ‘Invasive species’ and ‘Mapping the Pacific’, and video documentaries about the voyage and individual artist responses to it.

He began ‘Intertidal’ in 2014, an exploration of environmental impacts on a small stretch of once pristine North Auckland coastline, the Mangawhai Spit, a stark picture of dramatic and irreversible change. ‘Intertidal’ was shown at CEAC and The Vivian galleries and in 2017, at Bowen Galleries, together with a new series, ‘Carbon Ghosts’ – traces of human occupation at the spit over 800 years.

In 2018, with Ashburton Art Gallery Director, Shirin Khosraviani, he initiated ‘The Water Project’, a seminar, road trip and exhibition by thirteen artists to explore water’s centrality in present day environmental and political discussions and its artistic and poetic potential. This exhibition and its offshoots have been shown at Ashburton Art Gallery, Hastings City Gallery, Canterbury Museum and Aratoi Museum of the Wairarapa.

In 2020 along with partner Kate De Goldi, Bruce was a resident of Henderson House in Central Otago and exhibited subsequent moving image and stills in Toitū Te Whenua exhibition at Aratoi.

In 2021, The Lobster’s Tale, a collaboration with writer Chris Price, was published by Massey University Press as part of the kōrero series.

Since 2003 he has increasingly become engaged with filmmaking and moving image gallery installations. His first short documentary, Open Road (2005), is the story of New Zealander Wade Thompson and how he created the largest US recreational vehicle company after the initial purchase for one dollar, of the iconic Airstream. Other short documentary projects include: Influenza Pandemic – What You Really Need to Know, Sleeping Giants, Lines Across the Ocean and most recently Lake Stories Aotearoa New Zealand.
 

Public Collections

Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki
Waikato Art Museum Te Whare Taonga O Waikato
Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare o Rehua,
City Gallery Wellington
The Dowse Art Museum
Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu
New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade Manatu Aorere