The title, "Perishing in Paradise", refers to Marti Friedlander's seminal book "Larks in Paradise" (1974, Collins) in which she, as an immigrant to New Zealand, and the writer James McNeish, exposed some of the inner contradictions of our society. This exhibition juxtaposes the tragedy of sudden death with the lush beauty of the surroundings in which those deaths have occurred. It questions the seemingly benign social and environmental conditions we take for granted and points to a dis-ease that has affected most New Zealanders; a condition which remains largely under-reported and unexplained.
John Malcolm, Artist's statement, 2010