Between What Remains

Visual Arts Exhibition Review | Brian Rope

Between What Remains | Hilary Wardhaugh and David Manley

Belconnen Arts Centre |  27 March – 17 May 2026

The 2024 Canberra City News Artist of the Year, Hilary Wardhaugh, has again produced a wonderful collection of artworks – this time for a joint exhibition with a friend from their teenage years in Belconnen. Their surroundings influenced the visual elements they both would later use to convey their ideas and responses to the places they experienced as artists. 

David Manley has also contributed great imagery for this exhibition. His artworks often are constructed pieces – architectural models and dioramas. The two artists complement each other.

Between What Remains reflects on the lives of the two artists and their shared artistic vision. They have come together in this exhibition to present conceptually aligned bodies of work.

Manley photographically explores architectural models and historical sites that have been marked by violence. The profound influence past events and experiences have on the present and future of individuals and societies, the overwhelming nature of media in our lives today, and the rapid, decisive and forceful application of actions underpin his constructed trauma-scapes. In those quiet, speculative spaces, memories linger and collapse into the present.

Wardhaugh’s series The Disconnect also inhabits the territory of temporal rupture, but from a post-documentary urban landscape perspective. Exploring disconnection and the categorisation of the natural world in our urban landscapes, the work uses visual portrayals to contemplate puzzling things.

Curator Alexander Boynes wonderful essay in the catalogue suggests this reunion of the two artists in a renewed dialogue is shaped by their shared beginnings in Belconnen. He tells us that the developed photography practices of both artists have led to them viewing landscapes and architecture as sites of memory, rupture and return not simply as subjects.

All 21 works draw us in to stand before them, first looking closely at the elements contained in them, then thinking about the messages they are intended to convey. Messages about ecological forces, climate change, impacts on biodiversity, the consequences of human presence, the traumatic impacts, and their own perceptions and views about our responsibilities in our world.

Manley’s High Rise shows us a huge concrete edifice improbably hovering high over the surface below. We wonder how it could possibly have moved into that position, apparently weightless despite its size and composition. How it could be so light as to float there? 

High Rise, 2023. 1000mm x 1000mm. Framed pigment print – David Manley

Post-Traumatic Urbanist #2 Shows me a complex structure which might have been part of a long-gone urban settlement in what is now a barren landscape. Manley himself and others viewing the image may see something quite different.

Post-traumatic Urbanist #2, 2017. 500mm x 500mm. Framed pigment print – David Manley

Zoomorphic Cement Structure is another delightful piece. Seen from a distance it seemed to me that somehow a large cement block had moved right heading away from its purpose as a key support for the block above. Moving closer revealed I was wrong. A little research since has told me that zoomorphic architecture refers to the design and construction of buildings inspired by the forms and characteristics of animals. It embraces fluidity, dynamism, and a connection to nature. Perhaps my first interpretation resulted from fluidity.

Zoomorphic Cement Structure, 2013, 1250mm x 1000mm. Framed pigment print – David Manley

Wardhaugh’s pieces are diverse, but also complementary. Landscapes reveal terrains that have been significantly impacted by environmental stress and by decisions made, or not made, by those responsible for particular locations. In The Life of a roadside bush, the bush is a lone piece of nature in urban Queanbeyan’s concrete surroundings.

The Life of a roadside bush, 2025. 850mm x 1200mm. Framed pigment print – Hilary Wardhaugh

Danger! Nature is another most interesting piece. I invite you to look closely and interpret what you see for yourself. What are we looking at? Is it all real? Was the yellow vertical structure which neatly divides the image in two actually there in that landscape?

Danger! Nature, 2014. 850mm x 1200mm. Framed pigment print – Hilary Wardhaugh

Coercively Controlled confronts us with a view of trees being forced to grow as someone has determined they should, rather than allowing nature to take its course.

Coercively Controlled, 2025. 850mm x 1200mm. Framed pigment print – Hilary Wardhaugh

Succulent and Potty is another piece that demands our investigation. It is not simply a potted plant with thick, water-storing leaves sitting atop an interesting structure. Behind it is what might be a tall building under construction covered with translucent material.

Succulent and Potty, 2023. 850mm x 1200mm. Framed pigment print – Hilary Wardhaugh

Both artists have effectively used the cathartic power of image-making in a world marked by the human cost of disconnection, ambivalence and disruption.

This review is also available on the author's blog. A shorter review has also been published in Canberra City News.

DJILBA: A Moment in Time - Mirramu Creative Arts Centre

 

Floeur Alder performing DJILBA: A Moment in Time

Choreographer and performer: Floeur Alder
Costume design: Virginia Ward and Verity Wyllie
Poems: Virginia Ward -Producer: Kiri Morcombe
Mirramu Creative Arts Centre, 2 May 2026 - Reviewed by BILL STEPHENS 

Floeur Alder performing DJILBA: A Moment in Time at Mirramu Creative Arts Centre

One of the many highlights of the Ausdance ACT 2026 Dance Week program was the participation of West Australian dance artist Floeur Alder.

Following a preview screening in Canberra in October 2025 of the extraordinary dance film POINTE: Dancing on a Knife’s Edge, Ausdance ACT Executive Director Cathy Adamek invited Alder to return in 2026. The return visit included an encore screening of the film at the National Film and Sound Archive during Dance Week.

POINTE: Dancing on a Knife’s Edge powerfully documents Alder’s journey of recovery after a brutal knife attack that threatened to end her dancing career. While the film focuses on Floeur’s personal story, it also contains compelling archival footage of her parents at the height of their performing careers, as well as glimpses of their later lives.

Floeur Alder performing DJILBA: A Moment in Time at Mirramu

Although raised in Perth, Alder has a strong connection to Canberra. Her parents, Alan Alder and Lucette Auldous, were internationally celebrated dancers who both became Principal Artists with The Australian Ballet after distinguished careers with the Royal Ballet and other major companies. Their performances during the years when The Australian Ballet toured annually to the Canberra Theatre remain vivid memories. Equally memorable is the afternoon when I joined the crowd outside St Andrew’s Church in Canberra to watch them emerge after their wedding in 1972.

After retiring from the stage, both Alan and Lucette taught at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA). Their only child, Floeur, followed in their footsteps, studying and graduating from WAAPA with the expectation of matching her parents’ illustrious achievements.

Alder’s visit to Canberra was not limited to the film screening. Adamek also invited her to present a workshop on the Floorebarre technique, of which she is one of only a small number of practitioners worldwide. Perhaps most significant, however, was the opportunity for Alder to perform her dance work DJILBA, A Moment in Time.

Created just one month after her father’s death, DJILBA draws inspiration from the landscape of the Rainbow Coast in the Albany region of Western Australia, along with the Indigenous histories of the Menang people and the season of Djilba, or ‘Emergence’. Through this work, Alder seeks to understand her parents’ lives and her own place within that lineage, connecting with them not as they once were, but through nature and memory as part of her process of grief and healing.

Floeur Alder performing DJILBA: A Moment in Time at Mirramu

Canberra holds particular resonance in this context. It is the city where Alder’s father was born and where he began his dance journey, performing Highland dance and tap before discovering ballet. A scholarship to The Royal Ballet School followed. His sister, Joy, still lives in Canberra and continues to teach at the Joy Reiher School of Scottish Dancing. Her presence, along with her family, at this performance added a deeply personal emotional layer for Alder.

“Mirramu is a great, mysterious place,” Elizabeth Cameron Dalman reminded the audience in her introduction to the performance. With Lake George—known to the Ngunnawal people as Weereewa—forming a brooding backdrop, the setting provided an ideal atmosphere for this work.

Because the performance took place outdoors in mid-afternoon, the projections originally designed for DJILBA could not be used. Instead, they were presented separately as a studio display at Mirramu. Alder embraced the possibilities of the outdoor setting, introducing several new elements unique to this presentation. For the first time, she performed on a rectangle of white sand bordered with gum leaves, with a vessel of smouldering foliage placed at its centre.

Anticipating the biting winds that often sweep in from Lake George during Canberra’s autumn, Alder commissioned a new costume for the performance. Fortunately, the weather proved kind on this occasion.

The work began in near silence, accompanied only by the sounds of birds settling in the surrounding trees. Gradually, an evocative soundscape emerged, threaded with whispered poems written by Virginia Ward. Alder responded with movement that expressed a profound connection to Country, blending Indigenous-inspired motifs suggesting animal forms with contemporary dance language and, at moments, exquisitely executed balletic jumps and extensions. The result was a performance that was both mesmerising and deeply heartfelt.

In a brief address following the performance, Alder dedicated DJILBA, A Moment in Time to the memory of her father.

Elizabeth Cameron Dalmand and Floeur Alder following her performance of DJILBA.



Images by MODE IMAGERY.



This review also published in AUSTRALIAN ARTS REVIEW. www.com.au

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Deadpan artefacts: creative experiments with facial expression recognition in photographic portraiture

Visual art exhibition review | Brian Rope

Deadpan artefacts: creative experiments with facial expression recognition in photographic portraiture | Melita Dahl

ANU School of Art & Design Gallery, Wed 22 Apr 2026, 10:30 am - Fri 15 May 2026, 3:00 pm

An early graduate of the ANU School of Art & Design, Melita Dahl later undertook postgraduate study at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, Germany. Her work is held in major public collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Museum and Gallery and the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, and has been exhibited widely in Australia and abroad. This exhibition is presented as part of a Higher Degree by Research examination.

In the room sheet, Dahl tells us that “Over the past three decades, photography has evolved from its traditional role as an indexical imprint of the world into a fluid, computational space shaped by digital transformation.”

It is within that context that Melita Dahl has used the photographic portrait as a framework for research exploring “datafication of pose and expression through creative experiments engaging with Facial Expression Recognition (FER) technologies.” A key focus has been the neutral category in FER, which closely aligns with the so-called deadpan expression.

Dahl’s practice has long engaged the portrait as an experimental site where cultural and technological forces intersect with the history of photographic practice. While discussing her 2021 Portrait exhibition at Photo Access, I referred to how we try to interpret facial expressions. And how looking into a person’s eyes can supposedly tell us what that person thinks and feels. In essence, that is what this exploration is all about.

Deadpan portrait photography has frequently been presented as an "objective" form of documentation that gives no clues about what the subject might be thinking. Focusing on the neutral face - found to be measurable through facial expression recognition technologies - Dahl traces a correlation with the deadpan. She has used this interplay as a conceptual bridge in her research, connecting the conventions of analogue portraiture with contemporary data-driven approaches. As a result, her works “explore how neutrality operates across the intersecting fields of portraiture, photography and technology.”

The works on display include ten high-quality pigment ink prints on archival paper. There are also three 4K video loops and an “interactive data visualisation”. The latter is a fascinating Web application. It draws on the National Portrait Gallery’s photographic collection. The portraits have been visually and contextually filtered and sorted, then classified and arranged according to pose and expression, particularly the Deadpan. At the exhibition opening, I watched numerous people standing looking at the tiny reproductions of those portraits moving about the projection with information regarding assessed facial expressions, and the video loops, for lengthy periods. The facial expressions I saw on the viewers’ faces revealed nothing to me about what they were thinking!

So, let’s look at some of the exhibits here. Firstly, a 2019 print titled happy (0.96). When you look at the facial expression, do you see a happy face? If not, what sort of facial expression do you see?

Melita Dahl, happy (0.96), 2019, Pigment Ink Print on Archival Paper, 52.4 x 69.9cm

Next, a 2021 print titled Deadpan 9.980549278246. The portrait here is accompanied by some “scores” which provide us with more information than the portrait alone would.

Melita Dahl, Deadpan 9.980549278246, 2021, Pigment Ink Print on Archival Paper, 80x60cm

Here’s a 2026 image from the Perspective Machine series. A fine piece of art.

Melita Dahl, Perspective Machine 02, 2026, Pigment Ink Print on Archival Paper, 60x80cm

And here’s a still from a 2026 video Deadpan/Neutral – A comparative analysis. A triple Deadpan portrait no less.

Melita Dahl, Deadpan|Neutral – A comparative analysis, video still, 2026

All the prints in the exhibition are very high quality and are fine pieces of art as well as providing much information to viewers about the results of Dahl’s research. Those who have not been Doctor of Philosophy students may be challenged by the research concept and outcomes, but that doesn’t matter. Being challenged is a good thing for us all - and what better way to be challenged than by a great exhibition?

If you are unable to visit the exhibition, I encourage you to check out Dahl’s website https://melitadahl.net/. Those of you who can visit the exhibition should check the opening days and hours and be aware that the gallery will be closed to the public during examination times.

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

LOSE TO WIN

 

Written and performed by Mandela Mathia

Directed by Jessica Arthur

Belvoir Street production at The Q, Queanbeyan May 2

 

Reviewed by Len Power

 

A young man surviving a childhood in war-torn South Sudan and becoming an actor in Australia sounds like an impossible dream, but that young man, Mandela Mathia, tells all in his compelling and moving one man show.

Mandela Mathia grew up in South Sudan. He barely knew his father who died in the war there and lost his mother who drowned during a search for food. He and his older brother survived and, with a second foster mother, left South Sudan for Egypt. Eventually – and luckily – they made their way to Australia. Against all the odds as a young refugee, he pursued a dream to become an actor and succeeded.

Mandela Mathia

Mathia is a charismatic young man with a commanding presence and a fascinating story to tell. His show gives him the opportunity to tell his personal story as well as showcase his skills as an actor and singer. Trained as an actor at NIDA, he gives a strong, confident performance that connects immediately with the audience. His story is an emotional one but his personal resilience shines through his telling. Momentary flashes of humour in his story succeed because of his excellent comic timing and he is also a fine singer.

Yacou Mbaye

He is accompanied on stage by musician Yacou Mbaye, one of Australia’s leading West African drummers and dancers. Mbaye also engages personally and skilfully with the audience. He and Mathia work very well together presenting this story in words and music.

Director, Jessica Arthur, has created a fine production around Mathia. Her sensitive staging heightens moments of drama as well as making the show entertaining. Set and costume designer, Keerthi Subramanyam, lighting designer Kate Baldwin and sound designer and composer Brendan Boney have all contributed very effectively to give this show its unique look and sound.

At the end of the show, Mathia proudly announces that he is now as much Australian as South Sudanese. His story of resilience, self-acceptance, perseverance and hope is moving and uplifting.

 

Photos by Brett Boardman

 

This review was first published by Canberra CityNews digital edition on 3 May 2026.

Len Power's reviews are also broadcast on Artsound FM 92.7 in the ‘Arts Cafe’ and ‘Arts About’ programs and published in his blog 'Just Power Writing' at https://justpowerwriting.blogspot.com/.

 

 

LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES

Written by Christopher Hampton

from the novel by Choderlos De Laclos

Directed By Lainie Hart

Canberra REP production

Canberra REP Theatre to 9 May

 

Reviewed by Len Power 29 April 2026

 

Playwright Christopher Hampton’s literate 1985 play, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, is based on the famous and scandalous at the time French novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, written in 1782. People of a certain age will know it from the excellent film made in 1988 of Hampton’s play. It was powerful stuff then, and it remains just as powerful nearly 40 years later in this fine stage production by Canberra REP.

Two aristocrats, the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, enjoy using sex as a weapon of humiliation and degradation. It’s all a game to them but they devastate the lives of their targets, married woman, Madame de Tourvel, and the young and innocent, Cécile de Volanges. Fate ultimately takes its revenge on the pair of schemers.

Jordan Best (Marquise de Merteuil) & Jim Adamik (Vicomte de Valmont)

There are some outstanding performances in this production. Jordan Best is a formidable and evil Marquise de Merteuil and Jim Adamik is a powerful Vicomte de Valmont. They both present highly believable characters throughout the play and are particularly effective as their characters realize they have become victims of their own vile games. In their many scenes together, they are skilful in their timing of the dialogue and in their non-verbal interaction.

Yanina Clifton as Madame de Tourvel and Jamie Johnston as the young Cecile de Volanges, the two victims, give strong, emotional performances and Ros Engledow, Desiree Bandle, Isaiah Pritchard and Jack Shanahan are also very effective in their characterizations.

A feature of this production that involves many scene changes is the way they are smoothly handled by the actors playing the servants. The period set, very well designed by Kayla Ciceran, provides several acting areas for the different scenes and Nathan Sciberras’s lighting design is particularly effective in adding to the period atmosphere. The colourful period costumes by Helen Drum are attractive.

Director, Lainie Hart, clearly had a vision here. Her thoughtful and meticulous direction shows in every aspect of this production.

 

Photo by Ross Gould

Len Power's reviews are also broadcast on Artsound FM 92.7 in the ‘Arts Cafe’ and ‘Arts About’ programs and published in his blog 'Just Power Writing' at https://justpowerwriting.blogspot.com/.

 

BALLROOM BLITZ - Canberra Theatre

Ballroom Blitz dancers

Produced by Anthony Street – Choreographed by Aric Yegudkin

Musical Direction by Hayden Baird

Canberra Theatre – April 26^th, 2026. Reviewed by BILL STEPHENS.

Ballroom Blitz dancers in action.

Fans of long running television dance shows Dancing With The Stars, and So You Think You Can Dance were in their element at Ballroom Blitz.

There were swivelling hips aplenty, sequins, spangles and barely-there costumes decorating perfect bodies as ten highly accomplished ballroom dancers performed a succession of virtuosic solos, duos and tightly choreographed group routines conceived by Aric Yegudkin.

A three-time Dancing With The Stars Champion who has partnered many of the ‘stars’ who competed in Dancing With The Stars, and a former resident choreographer for So You Think You Can Dance, Yegudkin has devised a spectacular stage presentation that showcases the skill, passion and spectacle of ballroom dance.

The ten highly skilled dancers who make up the cast of Ballroom Blitz have either appeared in various episodes of the television shows or are award-winning Dance Sport competitors. They are Ruby Gherbaz, Daria Walczac, Stephanie Cappas, Siobhan Power, Jessica Girvan, Joshua O’Grady, Steven Greenwood, Shae Mountain, Peter Rodda and Sigurdur Sigurdsson.

Ballroom Blitz dancers in action

They executed Yegudkin’s intricate choreographies, which fused elements of Tango, Viennese Waltz, Foxtrot, Quickstep, Jive, Samba, Rumba and Pasa Doble into captivating solos, trios, and group routines, with mesmerising skill and pizzaz.

Regretfully, because there were no programs available, or any other means of identifying the dancers, it was not possible to identify the individual dancers performing those routines.

But they danced to captivating arrangements of favourites including “Moonlight Serenade”,  “Putting On The Ritz”, “Dancing in the Dark”,   and “Unchained Melody”  played by a multi-skilled live band consisting of  Hayden Baird (Musical Director, Sax, Flute, Synth, Kane Watts (Drums), Liam Powell (Bass and Double Bass), Luke Kozanski (Guitar) and Joseph Bonilla (Keys) who filled the theatre with lush arrangements worthy of the finest ballrooms.

Incorporated in many of the routines were two vocalists, Perri Espinoza, who during the program fascinated with her spectacular costume wardrobe, (a different outfit for every song) and her impressive versatility moving effortlessly between the song styles as varied as  Whitney Houston’s I Wanna Dance with Somebody, Tina Turner’s What’s Love Got to Do With It and Elvis Presley’s  Hound Dog.

 “The Voice” contestant, Arthur Hull, in addition to adding vocals to many of the dance routines, charmed in two feature moments with a superb rendition of Dancing in the Dark for which he was accompanied on guitar by Luke Kozanski, and later with a moody rendition of Dancing with a Stranger.

But his attempts at compering also provided an unfortunate low spot of the evening when he took the stage shouting into his mike “Havin a good time? Let me hear you!  Havin a good time?” before hectoring the already responsive audience to rate the sex-appeal of dancer, Josh.

This ill-conceived, time-wasting effort at audience participation, destroyed the atmosphere of glamorous sophistication engendered by the rest of the show. The time spent on this segment would have been better spent on voice over introductions identifying dancers in feature spots.

This lapse apart, Ballroom Blitz, offers audiences the rare opportunity to experience top class ballroom dancers in a superbly produced, highly polished theatrical spectacular.

Ballroom Blitz dancers in action.




Images provided 

  This review also published in AUSTRALIAN ARTS REVIEW. www.artsreview.com.au

 

LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES

 

Written by Christopher Hampton from the novel by Choderlos De Laclose. Directed by Lainie Hart. Canberra Rep. Canberra Rep Theatre. April 23 to May 9.

 

This is a dark play. At its heart are two unscrupulous manipulators,  two people with more money than they have morality who have the power to play with the lives of others. But in the Paris of 1785 revolution is coming.

Merteuil (Jordan Best) is a woman who relishes power and intrigue. Her collaborator is the equally amoral Valmont (Jim Adamik),  a skilled manipulator of women. It is an unstoppable double act that looks immune to change and challenge.

Valmont is juggling two pursuits. One is of the very young and naive Cecile (Jaime Johnston) despite the fact that she is engaged to be married. The other is of Tourvel (Yamina Clifton), married, deeply religious, but being drawn in by Valmont.

Everything is reported back to Merteuil and the pair of them devise further twists and turns.

Until something snaps and the relationship between the two takes a more savage turn.

There are powerful performances all round in a fierce play where nothing ends happily. Johnston is excellent as Cecile, a heartbreakingly naive young woman who has been taught nothing about the way of the world. As the older woman Tourvel Yanina Clifton subtly shows she knows more but is just as trapped by Valmont’s lies and by the demands of society as Cecile.

Azolan, Valmont’s servant (Jack Shanahan) is a enthusiastic supporter of his master’s manipulation of others and a clever anticipator of his wishes.

Best and Adamik  are well on the way to capturing the essential amorality and savagery of the central couple in performances that will deepen as the season progresses.  Adamik’s Valmont goes from genial to lost in a terrifying heartbeat. Best’s performance of Merteuil’s perceptive reflection on the position of women strikes home as does her final vision of the oncoming revolution which will sweep away so much.

Kayla Ciceran’s subdued period set and Nathan Sciberras’ understated lighting place the older women like Cecile’s mother Mme de Volange (Desiree Bandis) who does not see her daughter’s danger and Volange’s aged honest aunt Rosemonde ( Ros Engeldow) into a safe area that will not last as they gossip and play endless games of cards.

And the small army of servants, silent (apart from Azolan), impress as they glide and bow and pick up the domestic pieces, transforming the upper class interiors at one point into a snowy exterior as Valmont duels with Cecille’s justifiably furious fiancé Danceny (Isiah Prichard).

Be warned. This is not a comfortable play.

 

Alanna Maclean