Photos of Auckland's Young and Creative Holding Out Against Gentrification

Karangahape Rd is a tangle of contradictions: at once the domain of young artists and the playground of developers, whose divergent visions compete for cultural hegemony on this storied stretch of Auckland.

It's a battle, photographer Nicole Semitara Hunt says, that gentrification is winning. The fate of The Grow Room, the creative collective with which she works, illustrates her point. "We got kicked out of our old studio in St Kevins. The rent got doubled, and we got blamed for something else, and we got an eviction notice. And that's happened to a lot of creative communities, which is strange because K Rd is advertised as a creative hub, but these communities are getting kicked out or forced out due to not having money."

The fight to keep K Rd as a creative hub, at least, looks like a great time—Nicole's Locinapay Archives: A Photography Exhibition, which is on display for tomorrow night only at Lowtide in St Kevins Arcade, documents many of the good things that continue to happen on and around the street.

Both in her photos and in the reality Nicole photographs, music binds people together—communities form around bands and musicians, and the bars where gigs happen: it's "like family", the 24-year-old says. And finding her own way into that family is part of what her exhibition is about. "There's a lot going on that people don't get to see. When I moved here, I didn't know. It's really hard to find these communities, I guess, and to get involved with them. I wanted to show that."

For an artist, it's the ideal incubator of talent, allowing artistic cross-contamination. "I think what attracts me to K Rd is being able bounce off other artists, like being able to see them do all this crazy stuff makes me want to do something like that. We feed off each other."

At least for now. On-going development—boutique apartment blocks, upmarket food halls, the eventual completion of the train station—and rising rents might soon put this in jeopardy. Nicole say that already it can be a struggle to find both physical and cultural space on K Rd, which doesn't exactly give her optimism for the future: "I think a lot of these art communities are going to get pushed out."