Visual Art (Photography) Exhibitions Review | Brian Rope
LIGHT
| INTERSECTION I Alex Walker
NUDES
| Skye Thompson
Photo Access, Canberra | 11 April - 10 May 2025
I will start by suggesting these two exhibitions have no obvious or apparent relationship to each other. One is about drawing us into “a dynamic encounter where light is both subject and material.” The other “floats towards” troubling family histories and “re-sensitises.” I will return to this later but first let me discuss each exhibition quite separately.
Alex Walker is a trained darkroom photographer interested, amongst other things, in analogue processes and spatial perception. Her work seeks to explore how light travels. Showing it in Light | Intersection, she changes our perception of what we see. Information on the gallery website and in Kathryne Genevieve Honey’s essay in the room sheet explain that it is a site-specific exhibition exploring the role of light in photography and architecture.
The “architecture” of the gallery is not exactly spectacular. However, the moment I walked in and saw coloured lights moving around and across the surfaces of the first space and of the exhibits within it, I was drawn in. The light impacted on the sensory information which I received and endeavoured to understand and interpret. That, after all, is what perception is all about.
 |
| Alex Walker, Window Warp II, 2025 |
 |
| Light | Intersection installation image – Brian Rope |
 |
| Light | Intersection installation image – Brian Rope |
In the second gallery space Walker has placed illuminated light boxes within the ceiling - and above mirrors on the floor. Walking carefully between the mirrors whilst looking into their surfaces and at the changing lights overhead is a joyous sensory experience revealing more new ways of considering and experiencing photography.
 |
| Light | Intersection installation image – Brian Rope |
 |
| Light | Intersection installation image – Brian Rope |
The second exhibition, Nudes, is in the separate third gallery space. The artist, Skye Thompson, has reimagined what she describes as “the overlooked material of 8mm home films - transparent leader, light leaks, and physical blemishes - as a space for reflection and repair.”
The
“vaguely sexual titles” of a number of artworks brought smiles to my face. A
copy of her Nudes zine in a fabric bag alongside a handwritten instruction “touch
me” and an arrow pointing to it. A vibrating artwork about the clitoris. Even a
copy of the room sheet is somewhat cheekily displayed within an article of
feminine underwear.
 |
| Image of Thompson’s vibrating artwork on light box – Brian Rope |
 |
| Image of displayed room sheet – Brian Rope |
Thompson
studied screen production in the late nineties, directed film clips for bands,
and shot her own vignettes and small documentaries. For these artworks, she has
drawn from 8mm films created by her family forebears - slicing and overlapping selected
fragments. The resultant delicate compositions “explore memory, the body, and
the politics of visibility.”
 |
| Skye Thompson, Sun Bake, 2024 |
Through a practice grounded in disruption, she embraces imperfection as a form of resistance. Her digital scans of film retain whatever particles are on the material – dust, saliva, whatever. Quite the opposite of cinematic clarity and control, the result is an alternative archive - intimate, fractured, and quietly radical. Each artwork is well worth spending time with - looking, exploring, noticing, doing what every good photographer does – SEEING!
So,
was I wrong to suggest there is no connection between these two exhibitions?
Yes, I was. Both are very much about sensory experiences. Both should impact on
the viewer’s perceptions. Both challenge us.
This review is also available on the author's blog here.
