… Is somebody gonna match my freak?

Exhibition Review: Visual Art | Brian Rope

… Is somebody gonna match my freak? I Sophie Dumaresq & Asil Habara

M16Artspace, Gallery 1 | 24 January – 16 February 2025

…Is somebody gonna match my freak? is an exhibition by two multidisciplinary artists Asil Habara and Sophie Dumaresq. They were the 2024 recipients of the M16 Artspace ANU Emerging Artists Support Scheme residencies.

The exhibition’s title is taken from the lyrics of Nasty - a 2024 pop song by an American singer and songwriter Tinashe which went viral. “Match my freak” means finding someone who matches your weirdness and enjoys the same niche interests as you. Are we all a bit freaky? Is it a good feeling to find someone whose energy precisely matches yours? That was the philosophy behind this surging new bit of internet culture slang that also became a Trending TikTok sound.

The show is a tongue-in-check reference to the two artists shared sense of humour and interest in online popular culture, shit posting and the very real-life currents behind driving viral trends. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, shitposts on social media are of little to no sincere insightful substance. They may well be posted, as their sole purpose, to confuse, provoke or entertain. They are not specifically designed to evoke reactions.

Addressing topics ranging from the religious, to a popular reality dating television show “Love Island” and online consumer influencer culture, Asil Habara invites audiences to reflect on the profound intersections of culture and technology. This artist’s works in this exhibition are visually arresting and have amazing titles. Some are digital prints on satin cloth or on poly fil. Others are screenprints on paper or linen. The vibrancy of their colours is astoundingly powerful. Visitors may well find themselves simply feeling immersed in them. The artist is seeking to engage, to question and to be part of a larger dialogue shaping the cultural landscape. There are also some other types of works – found heels covered with colourful “saucy” images on collaged paper, and a found hat similarly improved via decoration.

bom cha cha cha cha, 2024. Digital print on satin cloth – Asil Habara
a new bombshell has entered the villa, 2024. Digital print on satin cloth – Asil Habara

Community is being in the third space with five hinge matches, at least two people who have seen your hole, ex housemates that went horrible, ex housemates that went well, a subleter who u rejected, friends with mutual distancing, three people that are currently in your dms, a secret crush or two, people who pretend not to know you from Instagram, randomly someone you went to primary school with, a guy with allegations but people for some reason are still friends with him, a string of lesbians who have all seen each other, a string of gays who have all seen each other, everyone being a dj while being all burnt out and everyone talking about moving to melbourne, sydney or berlin, 2025.Satin cloth, wood – Asil Habara

Crucifixion, 2025. Recycled timber, paper.
Asil Habara and Conor Ward

u know my swag not my story (i), (ii) & (iii), 2025
Screenprints on linen – Asil Habara

Valley girls giving blowjobs for Louboutins What you call that? Head over heels, 2025.
Found heels, collaged paper - Asil Habara

Sophie Dumaresq’s artworks feature her trademark pinks. As we have come to expect, she has used hand dyed and felted human hair. Other different elements in the artworks include rabbit and red fox skulls. The catalogue also reveals her use of plywood, a car hood, oil paint, hair spray, invisible blood and spit and UV reactive ink. She has provided UV torches to point at photos enabling us to see the otherwise invisible additions to their surfaces.

The titles of Dumaresq’s works are equally fascinating – “Like that one sex scene in Mulholland Drive” and “Manic Pixie Dream Rabbit Feet #1” are just two examples. Interestingly, in a new review of Mulholland Drive following the death of Director David Lynch, the reviewer Steve Palaski wrote “isn’t the kind of film that can be adequately explained, but I’ll give it a whirl.” If particular titles don’t move you and evoke feelings of familiarity within you, search for them on the Web and you should quickly identify clues as to why Dumaresq has used them. If you find yourself having trouble explaining to yourself, or to your friends, what this exhibition is all about, don’t be afraid, do the hard yards and give it a whirl. You’ll soon be showing your friends how vast your computer knowledge is!

Sophie Dumaresq - At it like f$$$ingrabbits (come find me hunny bunny), 2024.

Sophie Dumaresq - You can be my full time, baby, hot or cold, 2024.

Sophie Dumaresq, Like that one sex scene in Mulholland drive, 2024.

Together these two artists invite us to question the currents that shape our own material reality and cultural landscape, both online and IRL - come on, you must know it means In Real Life and is used to differentiate between online and offline worlds!

This review is also available on the author's blog here.

Exhibition Review: Visual Art | Brian Rope

Creek I Kirsten Wehner

M16Artspace, Gallery 2 I 24 January - 16 February 2025

Kirsten Wehner is a research-centred artist, curator, producer and writer living and working in Ngunnawal Country (Canberra). In her practice the artist works across a number of disciplines. She creates accessible writing, participatory experiences, sculpture installations, and a variety of visual media works.

Wehner is a Co-Director of Catchment Studio, an ACT-based independent creative platform transforming people’s relationships with waterways. She is also Co-Chair of the Board of the Cad Factory, an artist-led organisation based in Narrandera, NSW which collaborates ethically with people and place to create a local, national and international program of experimental work. And this busy artist also contributes to the committee of Plumwood Mountain, a unique 120-hectare heritage-listed private property near Braidwood, NSW which was handed back to the Walbunja people of the Yuin Nation in 2024 - the first time such a property has been gifted to an Aboriginal community.

Wehner is the M16 Artspace/ConceptSix Environmental Artist-in-Residence for 2024/5. Significant recent projects in which she has been involved include the National Museum of Australia pop-up touring installation River Country, the documentary More than a Fish Kill which explored how artists, fishery managers, and First Nations custodians processed 2019 and 2023 fish death events along the Darling River, and Finding Weston, Considering Country, a Traditional Custodian-led series of on Country walks. She has explored how disordered and unloved waterways can be re-imagined as holders of story and sites of cultural/ecological potential.

So where and what is Weston Creek? Located in south-western Canberra where a suburb carries its name, the creek was in the past “an intermittent stream, a system of rills, soaks and wetlands vibrantly alive with plants, insects and birds. Today, the waterway is largely piped and drained, forced underground or encased in concrete, struggling with pollution from street run-off and largely invisible to people who live in the area. And yet the creek is still there. Wehner says it is “flowing as it can, supporting life as it can, creating traces that ask us to know it.”

Immediately upon entering the gallery to see the artist’s exhibition, simply titled Creek, I was drawn to the framework of gathered sticks which invites us to imagine the creek as it once was. That, of course, is very much a part of what good artists do – they imagine things and invite those of us who see their artworks to do likewise.

Kirsten Wehner_Creek (installation view)_2024_Image Brenton McGeachie, courtesy the artist

Creek explores life along the Weston Creek waterway, asking what it might mean to care better for this particular disordered place. Inspired by talks and walks with Ngunawal Elders Uncle Wally Bell and Aunty Karen Denny that considered the creek as Country, Wehner explores some of the ways in which people connect with and seek to look after places along this waterway.

Just to the left of the stick structure some words about the exhibition pose a few questions adding to what we might think about. How might we respect and nurture Ngunawal wisdom? How does the work done by local park care groups sit alongside the invasive re-engineering of the creek’s flows? How can we listen to such waterways?

In what she appropriately describes as the “bends and eddies of the stick structure”, Wehner shows us some delightful watercolour and pastel works revealing what volunteers have done. Can we see how their efforts near to invasive engineering have contributed to the restoration of native habitat, despite the legacies of concrete drains?

Kirsten Wehner_Channel_2024_Image Brenton McGeachie, courtesy the artist

Other artworks in this excellent show incorporate ideas of fracture, using multiple panels or separated surfaces so we might avoid seeing the waterway simply as a ‘view.’

Kirsten Wehner_Flow Story_2024_Image Brenton McGeachie, courtesy the artist

Kirsten Wehner_Liferafts_2024_Image Brenton McGeachie, courtesy the artist

I considered how we humans think of fractures as something that occurs when our bones are broken, interfering with our everyday tasks. Then I thought about fractures in the land, caused naturally or by human interventions. Whether fractures occur naturally or otherwise, proper diagnosis and treatment are crucial for effective healing and recovery. Wehner is effectively encouraging us to understand that.




This review is also available on the author's blog here.

The Daylight Moon

Exhibition Review: Photography | Brian Rope

The Daylight Moon | Francis Cai

M16 Artspace | 19 April – 12 May 2024

Francis Cai, a fine art photographer and xR (Extended Reality) film director, is 25 years old and based in Sydney. He graduated from Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and from the University of Sydney with a Master of Moving Image. After graduating, he co-founded Studio 13 Sydney and extended his practice by participating in residency programs in France and New York City. 

Cai's recent post-pandemic era photographs frequently highlight strange landscapes and growing self-awareness. In the uncertain times he has experienced, he aims to sensitively examine differences in various living environments and cultures. 

The Daylight Moon series artworks exhibited here are intended “to conjure up a spacetime to accommodate unattainable and unchangeable elements in reality.” Thus, it is evident that these pieces of art belong to the hyperrealist movement, which enhances reality in order to produce illusions. Visitors would have trouble telling the difference between reality and a simulation of reality in most of the displayed images. The artist has thus achieved success.

There are seventeen high quality black and white archival framed inkjet prints of various sizes, all on Hahnemühle FineArt paper, plus a single one-minute digital video titled Aphelios I. From the Greek, Aphelios means Away from Helios. Away from the Sun. Little hints about the exhibits contents can be found in this title and the prints' titles. But each visitor's interpretation of each piece of art is essentially their own challenge, and it's likely that many will see different things and take different interpretations.

Certain scenes appear bigger, more significant, better, or worse than they actually are. They have an odd, enigmatic quality that is a little unsettling. For some viewers, emotionally charged thoughts, feelings, memories, and impulses may even be triggered by unexpected connections between seemingly unrelated elements within the images. Our imaginations will run wild, and we will see fantasies. I thought of the frequently tumultuous clamour we witness in our parliaments. Additionally, I was reminded that we frequently hear nowadays about people being misled by dishonest, cunning, manipulative social media users.

And that's precisely what Cai aims to accomplish by utilizing clips and images to create a fantasy world that defies time and space through a non-linear, fractured sequence of visual excerpts that evoke emotional shortcuts. He digitally manipulates black and white film negatives. Aberrant connections have given rise to deceptive states, like those we might imagine or encounter in our dreams. His entire endeavour is an exploration of the tainted connection between subjectivity and documentation.

In the print titled Awakening Moment, I certainly saw part of a feminine face , including an eye and slightly open lips. I expect you would too. But what else do you see? What emotion do you feel? For you, how do documentation and subjectivity connect in this artwork?

Awakening Moment, 2022 © Francis Cai

Likewise, Sunflower clearly includes some petals that shout sunflower. But what are the other elements about, what do they say to your imagination?

Sunflower, 2022 © Francis Cai

Sundial Dreams is a more complex image. There are a considerably greater number of elements within the frame, much detail to examine if you are drawn to do so, sharp areas as well as blurred or soft-focus spaces.

Sundial Dreams, 2022 © Francis Cai

Similarly, Under the Dome, has many elements for our eyes to explore and our imaginations to browse.

Under the Dome, 2023 © Francis Cai

In Time Reflection I saw simplicity. The reflection of something – whatever you want it to be – and the outlined shapes on the reflecting surface are simply that – a reflection and shapes. However, we still can, and should, look beyond this documentation and subjectively seek our own connections to it.

Time Reflection, 2022 © Francis Cai

If unable to visit the exhibition the other works can be viewed here.

This review is also available on the author's blog here.

 

Photography - Bushranger Blue by Rory King (Canberra)

Photography Review by Brian Rope

Bushranger Blue | Rory King

M16 Artspace | 9 June to 2 July

Rory King is a Canberra-based artist, whose work sits between documentary practice and personal narrative fleshed out through visual discourse. He is interested in unseen personalities living on the fringes of society and the tensions between nostalgia, melancholia, and the sublime. 

King received the National Gallery of Australia Summer Art Scholarship for photography in 2011, graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art majoring in Photomedia at National Art School in 2017, and was named one of the up-and-coming artists of 2018 by Vogue Australia. In 2022 he published his debut monograph Plumwood. He was recently awarded a Full Merit Scholarship by Charcoal Book Club to attend the 2023 Chico Hot Springs Portfolio Review in Montana, USA.

During his early career, King has been in various solo and group exhibitions, including at PhotoAccess (2018), Nishi Gallery (2019) and the Australian Photography Awards 'STORIES' Exhibition (2020).

An ongoing project, Bushranger Blue looks at those who live ‘outside the law.’ We know such outlaws as bushrangers, considering them to be both heroes and villains, champions of freedom who turned to violence and thievery to balance the scales. Bushrangers lived on the periphery of society, in the harsh countryside and outback.

What started as an investigation into these Australian outlaws quickly became a more personal exploration of isolation and grief. King travelled Australia in search of the spirit of these long lost, but far from forgotten men. In deserts, bush and mining towns, he tried to reconcile his own feelings and emotional responses to those remote and energised places. Living on the road for weeks, he began to imagine the isolation, silence, and spaciousness the outlawed convicts must have felt being exiled from regular life and needing to survive by any means possible.

The created imagery displayed in this exhibition does not paint an accurate narrative of the history of the Australian bushranger. Instead it explores loneliness, death, and longing. It reveals some of the isolation still experienced today in the more remote regions. The images speak of a yearning for deep connection in the face of isolation.

Twelve of the works are simply titled Bushranger #1 to #12. #2 is of a dog being washed in a wheelbarrow. #4 is of a dead tree root in which I see a face.

Rory King, Bushranger #4, 2021. Image courtesy of the artist

 #5 shows a man who looked to be gutting a ‘roo – a little research gave me the information “A man skins a roadkill kangaroo in a field of native wallaby grass for its pelt and meat. In the depths of the outback, self-reliance and industriousness is foundational.” #10 is of a hugging couple – more research provided additional information “a couple lovingly embrace after being separated during the COVID-19 Pandemic.”

A few works have titles that precisely describe the contents - Dog Tooth is one.

Rory King, Dog Tooth, 2021. Image courtesy of the artist

Nightscar shouted art to me but did not reveal a scar to my eyes. S.D. is an image of a rather forlorn looking man – his initials? Self portrait #2 shows, for me, a person who could well be a modern-day bushranger.

Rory King, Self portrait #2 , 2021. Image courtesy of the artist

I can’t conclude without mentioning Growling Swallet. Do you know what that means? A swallet is an underground stream or river. At the place where it goes beneath the surface it makes a loud “growling” noise when the water is running hard.

The exhibition is hung in the corridor space known as Gallery 3 – not, in my view, always the best place to show or to view sets of artworks. Because of the subject matters and loneliness/isolation themes the space works quite well here. The black and white images are smallish, some just 20.3 x 24.5 cm. There are pigment prints on Canson platine fibre rag and toned silver-gelatin prints. And there is a delightful handmade monograph in a Tasmanian oak case that is well worth exploring.

This review is also available on the author's blog here.

Whether World & From the Series ‘Light Jelly Sweet’

Animation, paintings, and photographs: Brian Rope

Moving image work: Whether World by Susan Bruce & From the Series ‘Light Jelly Sweet’ by Henry Hu

M16 Artspace | 14 April – 7 May2023

Whether World is by Susan Bruce, a moving image artist who describes the exhibition as a moving image work which considers whether the natural world (including trees, fungi, and aquatic life) communicates with humans and how humans communicate with the natural world. She questions how weather is experienced by our bodies and how we are changing everything through our activity.

Bruce is exhibiting in Canberra for the first time, so I turned to her website for background. Her practice also includes experimental short films, collage, drawings, prints and artist books. She is inspired by the textural qualities of film and the interrelationship between digital and analogue media.

Susan Bruce, Whether World (detail), 2022. Image still. Image courtesy of the artist

Writing about this show, Bruce shares “I am between two worlds. In one, I can see humans are crawling on the brown earth, butterflies are communicating with humans. Seeds are growing above the ground as well as underground. To me, trees are more valuable than diamonds. In my world, I float amongst the clouds, smell flowers, and swim underwater like a squid. I am free, and I am not ‘earth bound’.” Those charming words were a most useful backdrop to my viewing of her artwork.

Susan Bruce, Whether World (detail), 2022. Image still. Image courtesy of the artist

Without those words I would have seen fish, birds, gorillas and, yes, humans. I’d have seen the earth, underwater scenes and trees. I’d have noticed the drawings on her collages. But the backdrop helps us appreciate how Bruce sees people communicating with flowers and bees, and them communicating right back. She sees pigs in all their size and pinkness walking around us. She is saying to us that humans and non-humans co-exist, that humans are no longer at the top of the chain.

Susan Bruce, Whether World (detail), 2022. Image still. Image courtesy of the artist

Serendipitously, I viewed this exhibition the day after seeing the new documentary movie Giants, which is about some giants of Tasmanian ecological activism – former Greens leader Bob Brown and tall trees. Two days running, I found myself considering the same questions – how do we humans co-exist with all other forms of life on this planet? Where do we fit in the great scheme of living things? Have we any right to impact on the places where other life forms reside? That movie and this exhibition both successfully examine such questions.

From the Series ‘Light Jelly Sweet’, is new work by Henry Hu. Again, not previously familiar with this artist’s work, I went to his website. He began his practice using modern technological tools and easily accessible digital software creating artwork that engaged aspects of digital art and graphic design.

Later, Hu worked to incorporate digital creations into tangible forms. This delivered mixed-media paintings, lens-based works and computer-generated animation. What we see here are “testaments of existence as imagined, invented, remembered, and observed.” 

The artist has limited his tonal palette within each pleasing photograph and each mixed-media work - combining a multi-layered technique of paint pours with sand, gravel, twig, leaf, grass and wood. He describes this as a delicate manipulation of material that traces the ambiguity of nostalgia.

Henry Hu, the flint #38, 2022. pigment inkjet on cotton rag.38 x 26 cm Image courtesy of the Artist

There also are two pieces of abstract computer-generated animation conceived as an extension and companion to the static work. Sadly they’re displayed on small tablets with soundtracks accessed through tiny headphones. Turning on the tablets and locating the animations may defeat some.

Henry Hu, Velvet Fall (still image), 2023. Image courtesy of the Artist (1)

Henry Hu, Velvet Fall (still image), 2023. Image courtesy of the Artist (2)

I would have liked Hu’s excellent text about the series Light Jelly Sweet - on his website at https://henryhhu.com/works-two#ljs – to be displayed in the gallery. Here’s a taste: “Burning sun. Open air. Nature. The fields. The woods. A birch. A pine. An oak. Shades. Shadows. Clouds overhead. Streams beneath. They are gifts for a child. How unguarded we were, the early days.” (The full text is available in printed form at the front desk next to the room sheets.)

This review was first published by The Canberra Times on page 10 of Panorama and online on 29/4/23 here. It is also available on the author's blog here.

The Corner of My Eye

Photography | Brian Rope

The Corner of My Eye | Mark Van Veen & David Hempenstall

M16 Artspace Gallery 1 | 21 October - 6 November

Mark Van Veen - Edge Pool Branches, 2020.

 

Mark Van Veen - Grey Stone Branches

The term The Corner of My Eye might refer to things one sees quickly and briefly, rather than clearly. Using that phrase as its title, this exhibition explores the work of two photographers reflecting on easily overlooked details that, when studied, can reveal hidden meaning in the everyday. Both artists use photographic imagery as points of departure from actuality or truth, and as instances of lucidity.

Davis Hempenstall’s “familiar” family life photographs each show one view of the state of things as they actually exist, in which individuals in his family inhabit the places where he has chosen to photograph them. No doubt this illustrates fondness for his subjects. Perhaps he is even investigating the meaning of life. But it is left to us to interpret them for ourselves. Apart from a location – Narrabundah, Etty Bay, Lake Wivenhoe – or a name – Neville, Rafi, Fred – we have only what we are looking at to use in discern his meanings.

In the room sheet, Hempenstall quotes the famous American photographer Lee Friedlander “I only wanted Uncle Vern standing in front of his new car (a Hudson) on a clear day. I got him and the car. I also got a bit of Aunt Mary’s laundry and Beau Jack, the dog, peeing on the fence, a row of potted tuberous begonias on the porch and seventy-eight trees and a million pebbles in the driveway anymore. It’s a generous medium photography”.

Hempenstall’s black and white images include a lot of shadows – in one case partially obscuring a child such that a touch of mystery is added, often adding an additional shape to a geometric image.

David Hempenstall - Untitled, 2015

There are two photographs displayed alongside each other which are essentially identical in most respects. However, the face of the young child portrayed in them is a little more visible in one than the other. This is a delightful touch, illustrating how quick photographers need to be to capture particular postures or expressions adopted by people – especially youngsters. Whilst each separate image reveals a different moment, the two together provide a hint of how the child was responding to Hempenstall. 

Mark Van Veen’s series “Cease to Exist” reveals a fascination with the reflections in cemetery headstones and graves, how they hold images of the surrounding branches, leaves, skies, that sets one’s eyes focusing beyond the polished stone surface. In that moment it's as if we can see into a world beyond the engraved memorial as the hard materiality seemingly dissolves and a portal opens.

His quote in the room sheet is from another famous American, Minor White, “No matter what role we are in - photographer, beholder, critic - inducing silence for the seeing in ourselves, we are given to see from a sacred place. From that place the sacredness of everything can be seen.”

Van Veen’s works are all colour photographs, although it is difficult to see much colour in a small number of them. The titles of his works are generally sufficient to reveal the stories he saw and is sharing with us – Barriers are Imagined, Veiled Landscape, Deep Space.

Mark Van Veen - Memorial Stone Garden

Mark Van Veen, Puddle Forest

There are a number of excellent images relating to horizons – not what we traditionally consider to be a horizon, perhaps a set of strata with particular characteristics, or even simply his perception that what he saw when he looked was a horizon.

Mark Van Veen - Lichen Stone Sky

Appropriately, since photography is painting with light, the word light appears in four separate titles where Van Veen has seen it dividing time, being hard breaking, or even sacred.

This is a substantial exhibition – both in terms of quantity and quality.

This review was first published online by The Canberra Times here on 31/10/22. It is also available on the author's blog here.

 

The Opal Byway

Photography | Brian Rope

The Opal Byway | Rachael Maude

M16 Artspace | 30 SEPTEMBER - 16 OCTOBER 2022

Rachael Maude is an independent artist who works with film photography and traditional darkroom practices.

The Opal Byway is Maude’s high quality analogue photography essay exploring the unique experience of life in the community of Yowah. Where? I hear you asking. 

Yowah is in western Queensland, 938 Km west of Brisbane and 132 Km west of Cunnamulla. It is known for its opal mining and numerous opal fields that lie around the town - including the Yowah Nut, a local type of opal distinctive to the region.

The road to Yowah, known as The Opal Byway, takes you through a collection of small opal mining communities, including Quilpie and Eromanga. Yowah is at the end of the road. It is remote and inside a vast cattle station. But it has a successful annual Opal Festival on the third weekend of July. You can read about it, and the town itself, on a Facebook page or at yowahfestival.com.

Opal mining has long attracted non-conformers and outliers. In the opal fields you can encounter every kind of person, each with a compelling story about what drew them there. During a visit to the 2018 Festival, Maude became fascinated with the lifestyle of the locals and saw a special opportunity to capture an intimate look at their work and daily life.

As part of her later artist residency in Yowah, Maude shot continuously over a 6-month period, hand-processed negatives, and established a darkroom and studio, from which she printed all the works shown in this exhibition. The print quality of these black and white images is very good. And the stories told by each image are most interesting.

This body of work aims to introduce viewers to the individual experience of this isolated and eccentric community. You’ll learn much about Yowah and its small community by visiting this exhibition and taking it all in.

So, what is there to see? There are people – diverse members of this small community. Miners obviously, but also others such as the ceramicist and timber carver with a famous name who uses opal level clay and found native timbers.

Rachael Maude - Eddie McGuire in his studio

 

Some residents have been there for many years and not found any opals. Others have done very well and travel the world for months every year marketing their gemstones.

There are three children - brothers Jaiden, Cooper and James - who travel to attend school over an hour away in Eulo. There are places – mullock heaps of dumped mining rubble, beautiful patterns in the ground created by dried runoff, cutting sheds, underground offices and mines.

Rachael Maude - Ray's office

There are hardy gidgee trees, including one at the town rubbish tip, which emit beautiful aromas when fallen ones are burned as winter firewood.

Rachael Maude - Lone Gidgee Tree

There are pieces of mining equipment – including trommels, rickety hoists, buckets and a Caldwell drill that is expensive and dangerous.

Rachael Maude - Explorations

This is an eccentric yet strongly connected and self-sufficient community creatively problem solving as necessary to keep operational – some members diligently keeping records of finds, others drinking cold beer, all using Artesian Basin water.

Rachael Maude - Fred at his opal hut

Each image tells a different part of the fascinating story of this small community of about one hundred persons in this remote place. There is Dean who lives with his horse Nikki – literally. Each resident has their own unique, unconventional, probably non-conforming life story.

Rachael Maude - Dean & Nikki

When she exhibited these works at Yowah, virtually the entire community came along to see it over a shared barbecue – and purchased pieces from the show. No wonder Maude plans to return to explore Yowah further and spend more time with her established friends.

This review was first published by The Canberra Times online here on 5/10/22 and in print on page 19 of the paper on 10/10/22. It is also available on the author's blog here.

 

 

A Feminine Perspective

Photography | Brian Rope

A Feminine Perspective | Hedda Photography Group – Andrea Bryant, Andrée Lawrey, Brenda Runnegar, Eva van Gorsel, Helen McFadden, Judy Parker, Julie Garran, Lyndall Gerlach, Margaret Stapper, Marion Milliken, Pam Rooney, Susan Henderson, Ulli Brunnschweiler.

M16 Artspace | 9 - 25 SEPTEMBER 2022

This is the first exhibition from the Hedda Photography Group - named for the wonderful photographer Hedda Morrison who lived the last part of her life (1967-1991) in Canberra. Its convenor started the Group “because some photography clubs tend to be male oriented.” She feels that, stereotypically, men are more interested in equipment whilst women are more interested in what images mean, and how they relate. Most of the exhibitors know me, as photographer and reviewer. I’d be surprised if they consider me to be any less interested in the actual images than they are. I have known some men keenly interested in cameras and lenses, I also know women who fit that bill.

One of the women exhibitors revealed that the Group’s members had shared a long and vibrant discussion about feminist perspectives and that many different views were expressed. Are photographers’ life experiences the main determinant of their interests? Are they gender related? Do they reflect our cultural backgrounds? Or our economic circumstances or where we have lived?

The exhibition concept was for participants to express what they wanted, however they wished, with no constraints as to subject matters or themes. The gallery website says, “as women they are interested in subjects that may tend to be relegated from mainstream art practice, perhaps because of their perceived lack of relevance to the male gaze.”

So, against that background, I went to the exhibition wondering what I might see and how, as a mere male, I would react. I saw portraits (of women and store mannequins), architectural details, abstracts, nature (including details), family history (one even including an image of a man), wonderful contemporary creations, and many beautiful artworks. There are references to crafts that, traditionally, women have been more likely to explore than men. There is some exploration of families, but not specifically of women’s family roles. And haven’t we all seen the increased numbers of men assuming such roles? I saw nothing that exclaimed, to me, “only a woman would have seen or created this.” 

However, none of this means I didn’t very much enjoy the show. There are many excellent works on display. So let me now select some for specific mention. Susan Henderson has four delightful works, showing old family photos together with other items of family significance. Each of them works very well. A collage work titled Memories: Cousins Tilly and Sunday, 2022 incorporates scans of brightly coloured vintage Suffolk puffs - from the patchwork and quilting world.

Susan Henderson - Memories-Cousins Tilly and Sunday, 2022

Brenda Runnegar’s three works showing Amber and friends at various locations are intriguing, visual allegories  - the hidden meanings of which might have moral significance. Or might not?

 

Brenda Runnegar - Bush Hut

Andrea Bryant’s three portrait images use the word enigma in their titles. Enigma 3, with its eyes peering through bubble wrap is the most mysterious one.

 

Andrea Bryant - Enigma 3

Judy Parker’s delicately coloured compilations of dead and decomposing leaves and other organic material are fine examples of this genre that she does so well.

 

Judy Parker - Transience

Julie Garran is showing a strong sample of her store mannequin and doll images, the latter incorporating some images of a daughter.

Julie Garran - Portrait 3

Marion Milliken is displaying a fine essay of architectural building pieces.

 

Marion Milliken - Buildings-An Essay, 2022

 

Lyndall Gerlach has four exquisite examples of her lilies.

 

Lyndall Gerlach Iconographic Lily #8

And Ulli Brunnschweiler’s Groundworks series are wonderful abstracts.

 

Ulli Brunnschweiler - Groundworks IV

I could mention every individual exhibitor, but space does not permit. Suffice to say that all of them are showing strong works. 

I encourage you to visit and enjoy each artwork, including six photobooks . Consider what contemporary photography and photo art is all about, and how both women and men photographers see their worlds.

This review was first published by The Canberra Times online here and on page 12 of Panorama in the print version of the paper on 24/9/22. It is also available on the author's blog here.