Dark Matter 2024

Exhibition Review: Photography | Brian Rope

Dark Matter 2024 I Rozalind Drummond, Claire Paul, Phoebe Kelly, Sari Sutton

Photo Access  I 25 October - 23 November 2024

The annual Dark Matter residency program at Photo Access aims to provide a supported opportunity for artists whose practices incorporate darkroom-based or other alternative processes. The residencies aim to foster the creation of innovative image-based works that involve artistic experimentation, critically engage with contemporary darkroom-based practices and explore social, political, environmental and aesthetic questions of contemporary relevance.

This exhibition is the outcome of the 2024 Dark Matter program. The catalogue tells us that, “using the Photo Access darkroom facilities, these four artists have explored materials and methods of image-making that challenge and expand the perceived boundaries of photography. Their collective works navigate the interplay of landscape, technology and natural forces through experimental approaches …. and site-specific practices.”

When reviewing the 2022 Dark Matter show, I suggested that whilst most of us are obsessed with immediate image creation, that year’s participants were exhibiting what a slower and more contemplative approach could deliver. That is equally the case again this year. 

Before looking separately at each artist’s contributions, I would briefly mention the different display approach used in some parts of this show - works of differing sizes have been grouped together, sometimes overlaying others. That, in itself, provides something additional for us to think about.

Installation image – Eunie Kim

Emerging artist Claire Paul uniquely combines long-exposure photography, foraging, and screen-printing, fostering a mindful connection with the environment through her deeply ecological art practice. Her portraits of place offer something of an antidote to the pace of our lives nowadays. She has used long-exposure pinhole photography to highlight mindfulness and slowness. Her artworks have been screen-printed onto handmade paper using charcoal and ash. She has utilized rainwater, repurposed artworks, plants she has collected from the locations where she has photographed, and other materials like turmeric and rosemary. Viewing and exploring the completed pieces is most enjoyable.

Wash, 2024, charcoal and ash screen-printed onto handmade paper (rosemary, recycled artworks, seawater, foraged plant matter from photographed site), 40 x 28 cm - Claire Paul

Phoebe Kelly is visual artist and photographer living and working in Naarm (Melbourne). She uses photography, casting and processes of material transferral to investigate the potential of translating the intangible into the physical. In this exhibition, smartphone photos serve as the basis for Kelly's prints, all bar one of them being silver gelatin. She has used those images as her source material, then translated and manipulated them in various ways to create transformed artworks. Other processing possibilities that might be employed are still being investigated. The group of pieces being shown here is also very much worth exploring.

A moving surface, from the series Two Suns, 2024, silver gelatin print, 40 x 30 cm - Phoebe Kelly

Rozalind Drummond is a Melbourne-based artist. Working across expanded photographic practice, performative action and video, her practice is essentially a nuanced exploration of spatial and natural environments taking a multi-disciplinary approach. She has used photography, videography and performative actions to engage with the concepts of landscape and place. In her works that are on display in this exhibition, Drummond has examined various transitory sites - temporary buildings, empty offices, and unoccupied spaces – revealing to both herself and us, new terrains. Once more, visitors are encouraged to look closely at the works and consider what they are showing.

Untitled, 2024 - type C screen print, recycled muslin cotton, 84 x 145 cm - Rozalind Drummond

Sari Sutton is a Canberra-based photographer exploring human impact on Earth, and related social, economic, and environmental themes through diverse styles. Inspired by Canberra’s Mount Stromlo – which is deeply significant for settler scientists and its original Indigenous inhabitants, Sutton has investigated “the invisible but felt forces of interconnectedness and energy – between us, the earthly natural world and the celestial.” Her resultant series, Dark Energy, is another excellent outcome from this year’s residencies.

Interstellar, 2024 – digital inkjet print on Photo-Tex 118 x 94 cm - Sari Sutton

This is the third annual Dark Matter show I have reviewed. Once again, the artists have delivered excellent works, demonstrating that the residency program is a most worthwhile one.

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

Dark Matter 2023

Brian Rope - Photography Exhibition Review

Dark Matter 2023 | Isabella Capezio, Rowena Crowe, Odette England, Janhavi Salvi

Photo Access | 26 October to 2 December 2023

This exhibition is the outcome of the 2023 Dark Matter Artist Residency. Over nine months, these four artists have explored alternative processes in the PhotoAccess darkroom. With each artist embracing unique creative approaches, their collective works navigate identity, memory, and the resonance of place.

As I left the gallery following my viewing of the exhibition, the Director of Photo Access asked me if I had enjoyed it. My immediate response was that I needed to go home and think about it. I had made just a few notes to assist my thought process, but they were of minimal help. I had not managed to attend the opening so did not have the benefit of having heard words spoken about the show at that time. I did, thankfully, have a copy of the printed catalogue to read.

These works are most certainly varied. Each artist has explored and provided us with quite diverse art. Everything shown here is different from much of what we more usually see in exhibitions. I have no doubt that some visitors would go away asking themselves what it was all about. Others, however, would leave excited by the works they had seen, wanting to tell others about them, continue thinking about and challenging themselves to do something new if they also are artists.

Isabella Capezio is a photographer, artist and lecturer in photography whose research and artwork engages in themes of failure, queerness and landscape. We are told that here they are drawing upon collective memories and colour darkroom printing to forge connections with place.

There are a large number of hand-printed colour photographs in Capezio’s contribution. They are a homage to an iconic 1981 set of 24 images, by Ian North, of Canberra suburbs which featured infrastructure, roads, the streets, the houses, their gardens, the fences,  and other typical views of the time – all devoid of human presence. There is an interesting piece by Paul Costigan about six of those works by North at https://the-southern-cross.com/ian-north-on-canberra/.

On the opposite wall to Capezio’s works are two lengthy recordings that can be listened to through headphones. Both feature various people talking about North and his Canberra Suite. Also on display at the start of Capezio’s works is a copy of a 2-page letter from Capezio to North expressing deep gratitude for his unknowingly collaborating on the homage project.

Isabella Capezio, After North #8, 2023, c-type print, 20 x 25 cm

Janhavi Salvi is an Indian artist based in Canberra, working within the visual and media arts. In this exhibition she has juxtaposed photographs and screen prints from her life in India and Australia, giving voice to her evolving sense of identity. There is also a video projection on a screen.

A series of inkjet prints on envelopes, the type with windows that we all receive from government agencies and the like, are fascinating. The photos on the envelopes are from Salvi’s life in India. The envelopes were received when in Australia. So the end product is all about connecting memories to an evolving self-identity.

Janhavi Salvi, Do you miss home? (detail), 2023,
3x3 envelope grid, inkjet prints on envelopes, 23.5 x 12 cm

Rowena Crowe is a time-based artist whose work involves analogue processes. Here her modified 16mm hand-wound motion camera reinterprets photography, overlaying unexposed film with transparent acetate sheets allowing direct intervention onto the film and creating a space to explore.

Rowena Crowe, Prepared Camera 2, 2023, silver gelatin & RA colour prints,
installation detail, multiple dimensions

Odette England is an Anglo-Australian visual artist and writer. She combines silver gelatin prints and found objects to capture familial ties and vulnerability. Other contemporary photographers also combine assorted objects with their prints, but these are more powerful than many others I have seen. The found materials are things most of us would not even pick up, leave alone use them to block out significant parts of our images.

Odette England, I just want to be old, like a normal person,
from the series To Be Developed, To Be Continued, 2023, silver gelatin print

Odette England, from the series To Be Developed, To Be Continued, 2023, silver gelatin prints & found materials, multiple dimensions (installation image - Brian Rope)

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