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?
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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?
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
