Minerva Betts

Minerva Betts is one of the pseudonyms associated with the New Zealand-based artist collective et al. Some of the group’s members were active as early as 1975, but the collective itself was not formally identified until July 1995, when l budd et al. exhibited the artists in conversation with themselves at 23A Gallery, Auckland.

Based in Christchurch during the early period of their art production, Minerva Betts is primarily known for photographic work. The artist investigated photography that mixed notions of the personal and the private underpinned by performance and collaboration. Their photographic approach formed images that are disquieting and occasionally disturbing through their use of motion combined with slow shutter speeds which made monochromatic images that are frequently blurred. Betts’s image-making was ground-breaking in New Zealand because it questioned notions of portraiture and representation by allowing chance, spontaneity and performance to mutate appearance into what was unfamiliar while seemingly being based in a domestic context.