Bronwyn Holloway-Smith, Marvellous Machines

Jhana Millers is pleased to present a small series of drawings by Bronwyn Holloway-Smith in the gallery foyer.

These works draw on early personal computing history in Aotearoa. Three intricately pencil-rendered scenes inspired by local 1980s technology ads and computer folklore feel both familiar, and slightly uncanny.

Stoned_01 revisits the story of one of the first global PC viruses, created in Wellington in 1987, which famously declared “Your PC is now Stoned!”. Shown here on an IBM terminal, the message takes on new resonance when viewed from a later moment shaped by pandemics and political referenda. The two Marvellous Machine works are inspired by advertisements from Bits & Bytes, a New Zealand computing magazine, where early technologies were often “humanised” through gesture, symbolism, and spectacle.

Holloway-Smith’s practice is known for its sharp attention to overlooked histories, particularly where technology, power, and belief intersect. Her current exhibition Wheel of Avalon at The Dowse Art Museum extends these concerns, weaving together an examination of communications systems, myth, and collective memory. The works presented here sit alongside that wider project, offering a quieter and more intimate entry point into its ideas.