Rebecca Nunes

Associate Professor Of Lens-Based Media

Digital, Tech, Innovation & Business

Becky Nunes has a professional background in photography and documentary and experimental film-making. Her practice-as-research utilises lens-based tools to interrogate the problematic and complicated nature of land use & resource extraction and to re-centre the other than human as priorities for care. Her lens-based arts practice has been presented at Auckland and Christchurch City Galleries (Aotearoa-New Zealand), the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, at Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, The Gewerbemuseum (Museum of Applied Arts and Design) Switzerland, and is held in the permanent collection of Tāmaki Paenga Hira/Auckland Museum. Nunes has extensive experience in interdisciplinary teaching in Photography and Fine Arts undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, with a focus on placemaking and social & environmental sustainability. She is a founder member of Tangent Collective (Aotearoa), a member of PLACE Collective (U.K) and creative partner at 35a (U.K).

Professional memberships and activities

MeCCSA APHE

Academic qualifications

MFA, 1^st Class Hons: Whitecliffe College. Auckland N.Z

BA, Film & Literature: Warwick University, England

Expertise

• Recipient of the 2019 SPE International Conference Grant for highest ranked peer-reviewed international paper.

• Doc Edge Festival: finalist, best feature Documentary 2018

• New Zealand Institute of Professional Photography: Commercial Photographer of the Year 2009

• NZIPP Landscape Photographer of the Year 2010 Lens-based critical and contextual theory.

Analogue and digital production/post production of still & moving image, studio and environmental photography

Research interests

• ecologies and other-than-human agency in art

• indigenous alliances.

• collaborative practices and co-design,

• interdisciplinary practices

• PhD study current focus: Ethical strategies of visibility: new approaches to photo-filmic representation of the land.

Enterprise and commercial interests

35A Creative partnership: building resilience in communities through art strategies.

Teaching

I teach at Undergraduate and Post-graduate levels, contributing to Photography, Fine Arts and Film courses. I co-lead the Masters in Contemporary Arts Practice.

Publications

2023 Clouded vision: strategies of occlusion in photographic representations of the other-than-human. Paper presented at (Un)Common Worlds III Navigating and Inhabiting Biodiverse Anthropocenes A human-animal studies conference at the University of Oulu (FIN), University of Derby (UK), and online. Oct 4-6th

AirPlace: Interdisciplinary approaches to regeneration & social sustainability. Paper presented at Applying Education in a Complex World, AMPS/Sheridan College, Toronto Apr 26-30

Resonance. Group exhibition with PLACE Collective at Timber Festival, June 7-9th

2022 DeComm C20 Group exhibition at X-Church, Gainsborough. Sept 16-30th

Hikoi Wairua. HD Video, 6” looped. Screened as part of a presentation at Creative Communities international festival and conference, Staffordshire University. May 19^th 2022

2021 We Look to the Future With Progressive Ideals. Group show as part of 6-month residency, Thistle Hall Lightbox, Wellington, N.Z

2020 An Age of Iron. HD Video, 8' looped.

RM Gallery, Auckland March 4th - 21st

The Water Sustains Us Production of collaborative student exhibition produced online for Auckland Festival of Photography May 30-June 10th.

2019 Visual Citizenship. Visual politics and documentary practice. Paper presentation at AAANZ Conference, Auckland University Dec 5-10^th

15 Minutes of Fame – Warhol, Facebook and the Work of Luke Willis Thompson Paper presentation at SPE National Conference, Cleveland, Ohio. Mar 6-10^th.

Recipient of the 2019 SPE International Conference Grant for highest ranked peer-reviewed paper.

2018 Co-opting the Apparatus. The lens as feminist tool for social engaged art practice in Aotearoa-New Zealand. Paper presentation at Aesthetics, Politics and Histories, the Social Context of Art. AAANZ Conferences, RMIT Melbourne Dec 5-10^th

This Air is a Material screening & artist talk: Christchurch City Art gallery. April 17^th

Triangulated Agency and Co-authorship in a Photographic Practice. ArtMatters April 2018 published by Auckland City Art Gallery

2017 Pyrite. (B. Nunes. 2017 600x400 digital composite/Dibond) Finalist and Travelling exhibition: Wallace Art Awards

This Air is a Material screening & paper presentation: ARC Theatre, National Film and sound Archive of Australia. Women in the Creative arts Research Conference, Australia National University Canberra 10-12^thAugust 2017.

Collaborative Processes and key thematics in the film This Air is a Material – The work of Ann Shelton. Women in the Creative arts Research Conference, Australia National University Canberra 10-12^th August 2017.

This Air is a Material screening: DocEdge Festival Auckland and Wellington May/June 2017

PAPERWORK group exhibition at DEMO Space March 23-26^th

NEWPHOTOMEDIA Curated by Tangent as part of Auckland Festival of Photography group exhibition at DEMO Space June 6-12

Triangulated Agency and Co-authorship in a Photographic Practice paper presented at symposium: Agency and Aesthetics: A symposium on the expanded field of photography. Auckland Art Gallery April 1 2017.

rebecca.nunes@staffs.ac.uk

External profiles

ORCID