King George VI Secondary School (2012)
Installation view: Images and Islands, Mangere Arts Centre, Auckland, 2013.
Selected images: inkjet digital prints on Ilford galerie gloss.
A photographic series exploring the King George Secondary School in Honiara, Solomon Islands. Built in 1964 it was the first government co-educational boarding school in the Islands. Funded by the British Colonial Administration it was part of a policy to develop future independence for the islands. Stevenson grew up in Honiara and her father, Charles Stevenson, was the architect of the school complex. The architecture reveals a translation of tropical modern architecture from West Africa to the Pacific region. The revisiting of this site draws on a subjective relationship to the place and her father’s perspective. Stevenson discusses this building in her paper "(Re)constructing Tropical Architecture in Solomon Islands: Conversations with my Father," Fabrications: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, 24:2, 214-243 (Read online)