Exhibition Review: Photography | Brian Rope

Waves of Kinship | Marzena Wasikowska

Platform by Canberra Contemporary (previously CCAS Manuka)

7 – 23 February 2025 (11am – 5pm, Fri - Sun)

Marzena Wasikowska is an excellent visual artist specialising in photomedia. Having participated in a workshop series she led four years ago this month, I can attest that she also is an excellent tutor. Inspired by Wasikowska’s interest in capturing the human qualities of Canberra, we explored the idea that a city is best understood through its people. 

Based in Canberra, Australia, this artist has maintained a professional practice in portraiture and landscape photography since the mid-1980s. Her landscape photography is inspired by fieldwork and studio meditations on the built environment, waterscapes and global warming.

In the room sheet for this exhibition, Waves of Kinship, the artist has written that the Far South Coast of New South Wales (Australia) is a cherished destination where she captures her family and the beguiling ocean.

She reveals that, as she gazes from the shore towards the horizon, she reflects on her polish past and the loved ones she left behind – figures who inevitably find their way into the photographs she creates.

There are four images of waves. Each of them holds your attention. You can imagine yourself standing on the shore looking at them, watching their movements, seeing the patches of sunlight on the ocean’s surface, wondering what is causing particular shapes to emerge then disappear. Another visitor when I was at the exhibition spoke of being mesmerised by one of the waves.

Marzena Wasikowska - Wave 1, 2025. Giclee Ilford Rag 100x100cm

Conversely as she looks back from the other side of the world, Wasikowska says that isolated outcrops on the fringes of the northern Pacific Ocean take on the presence of her Australian family left behind.

There are four images referring to these outcrops as spires. Each of them is a joy to consider. Their shapes are fascinating, and they contain much detail to explore. The light pouring down from the sky above beautifully complements each outcrop.

Marzena Wasikowska - Spire 1, 2025. Giclee Ilford Rag 100x100cm

When she watches her children, seemingly transfixed by the sea, she wonders what emotions it stirs in them. In this exhibition the artist has sought to distil those moments into works on paper, offering a reflection on memory, distance and connection.

Two images, Gazing Back and Gazing Forward, include family members. We can spend time with each of them, wondering what they may have been thinking as they looked at the ocean, considering the artist’s words in the room sheet. And even thinking about those times in our own lives when we have similarly stood gazing at ocean waves, at things that appear through them from the depths below, and perhaps similarly reflecting on some of our own memories.

Marzena Wasikowska – Gazing Back, 2025. Giclee Ilford Rag 100x100cm

I was reminded of a time when I was by the coast with my wife and children. We four were at a similar stage of our life journeys as my parents, brother and I had been when we migrated from England to Australia. I found myself then reflecting on the bravery of my parents making the decision to relocate to the other side of the world in 1950 when they thought they might never see their wider families again. I doubted that I would have had the necessary courage to do likewise.

Memories, reflecting on our lives, relationships with family members – these things are important for a whole host of reasons. Wasikowska has used her considerable photography skills to create an exhibition which successfully achieves her aims to reflect on memory, distance and connection.

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