Cloud Studies

Visual Arts Review | Brian Rope

Cloud Studies | Rebecca Beardmore, Leah Beeferman, Yvette Hamilton, Anna Madeleine Raupach

Photo Access, Canberra, Australia | 24 September - 24 October 2026

The Cloud Studies exhibition is presented in partnership with the Canberra Art Biennial, which is Canberra’s biennial contemporary public art festival. The artworks have as a height datum contour 556, the water level of Lake Burley Griffin, which links the event in name as well as in purpose to the history of the central Canberra landscape. The artworks and installations selected for the festival respond in some way to Canberra’s history, from 65,000 years to the present day. The Biennial, therefore, offers the Canberra, Australian and international community a unique opportunity to engage with and understand the layers of Canberra’s history through art. 

The exhibition is at Photo Access, which is the Canberra region’s centre for contemporary photography, film, video and media arts. It has brought together four artists to imagine the atmosphere as a threshold, where clouds hover between the natural and the technological. They consider clouds not only as weather forms but as symbolic spaces where history, representation, science, and environmental change converge.

The artists photography, video, data visualisation and printmaking artworks in the exhibition echo the contemporary “cloud” of digital and algorithmic technologies. The atmosphere emerges here as a frontier, where earth and sky, human and machine, presence and disappearance intersect.

Rebecca Beardmore’s experimental printmaking practice investigates intersections of photography, materiality, and image-making systems. Current research explores moiré patterns as perceptual thresholds, revealing tensions between analogue tactility and algorithmic translation. She is exhibiting seven photopolymer photogravure pieces. They are all strong pieces, with the largest one shown below being the standout artwork for me. 

Rebecca Beardmore, Plate 4: Cumulus of strong vertical extent, WMO 1956 (1956/2026), Reconstruction (left panel), 2026, photopolymer photogravure, 180 x 107 cm (Installation image by Brian Rope)

Leah Beeferman makes digital images, prints, objects, and videos, records sound and writes texts. She seeks to understand the atmosphere: the ways it makes weather forms, forms landscapes, and alters them. Her contributions to the exhibition are a video with sound, a dye sublimation print on fabric, and a CNC-routed aluminum piece. For readers who do not know, CNC refers to a computer-controlled machine used for cutting various materials

Aluminum is the most abundant metallic element in Earth’s crust. It appears as a silvery grey metal and is known for its low density, high conductivity, and versatility. Beeferman has created a delightful artwork relating to the Kennaook/Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station near the north-west tip of Australia’s island State of Tasmania. That scientific observatory plays a critical role in understanding our atmosphere and monitoring key drivers of climate change.

Leah Beeferman, The Uncertainty Location (Kennaook-Cape Grim), 2026, CNC routed aluminum, 180 x 107 cm (Installation image by Brian Rope)

Leah Beeferman, Shadow Clouds Form (Barbados), 2024, Dye sublimation print on fabric, 335 x 183 cm (Installation image by Brian Rope)

Anna Madeleine Raupach is a multidisciplinary artist. Her practice engages with science and technology to critically address socio-political issues enmeshed with climate change. Her four pieces in the exhibition include one comprising Fresnel lenses and jump rings which are suspended from the ceiling and fascinating to look into and through – whilst doing so, I couldn’t resist capturing four photographs with my phone camera.

Another Raupach artwork features polaroids, hand-drawn animation and a custom display module. She also is showing a Neural Radiance Field HD video and another created from YouTube videos, electronic display modules, and chalk. Each of these exhibits drew me in and held my attention for some time.

Anna Madeleine Raupach, Still from In an instant, 2026, polaroids, hand-drawn animation, custom display module, 14.5 x 10 cm (Installation image by Brian Rope)

Anna Madeleine Raupach, Still from Places on Earth Where all Forces are Absent, 2025-2026, Neural Radiance Field HD video, 6:55 min. (Installation image by Brian Rope) 

Anna Madeleine Raupach, Still from A Disenchanted Sky, 2026, YouTube videos, electronic display modules, chalk. (Installation image by Brian Rope)

Yvette Hamilton’s photographic practice spans analogue, digital and alternative practices, and is conceptually guided by ontological explorations of photography and the link between vision and knowledge. She is exhibiting several silver gelatin lumen prints, a piece comprising a photographic collage, LED lights and a microprocessor, and The Middle Air, a limited-edition artist book.

The prints are delightful portrayals of clouds wherein viewers might visualise various landscapes. A shaft of light regularly penetrates the collage artwork then fades away. The displayed copy of the book is well worth looking through. Copies of it are available for purchase, with each containing a unique lumen cloud silver gelatin photograph, hand-printed by the artist. 

Yvette Hamilton, Optical Depth #4, 2026, Unique silver gelatin lumen print, digital print on glass, custom frame, 50 x 40 cm (Installation image by Brian Rope)

Yvette Hamilton, Observation Point: Rising Air, 2026, Photographic Collage: Unique C type prints, silver gelatin lumen prints, LED lights, microprocessor (Installation image by Brian Rope)

Yvette Hamilton, The Middle Air, 2026, Artist book, 48 pages, Edition of 50. (Installation image by Brian Rope) 

Overall, this is a most interesting exhibition. It achieves its purpose and is a valuable participant in the art biennial.

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