2025 National Photographic Portrait Prize

Exhibition Review: Photography | Brian Rope

2025 National Photographic Portrait Prize | Various Artists

National Portrait Gallery, Canberra | 16 August – 12 October 2025

Then touring nationally - Cairns, Mount Gambier, Geraldton & Horsham | between 6 December 2025 & 26 January 2027

Now in its 18th year, the National Photographic Portrait Prize supports and celebrates photographic portraiture in Australia. There are many great works in this exhibition of finalists, only some of which I will discuss here.

The winner for 2025 is Untitled #01 (from the series Code Black/Riot) 2024 by Hoda Afshar, a Naarm/Melbourne-based visual artist whose practice focuses on the intricate relationships between politics and aesthetics, knowledge and representation, visibility and violence. All participants in the series were invited to use a means of their own choosing to conceal their identities while making a personal statement. The three First Nations youngsters in this image chose to conceal their faces to avoid being identified by the youth justice system.

Untitled #01 (from the series Code Black/Riot) 2024 © Hoda Afshar

 

When we viewed the exhibition, both my companion and I observed that there were numerous images of (and by) members of the LGBTQIA+ and Indigenous Australian communities. Amongst them is Hilary Wardhaugh’s Zev and Nick, 2025, their relationship revealed partly by the image and also by the accompanying artist statement. Mary-Lou Orliyarli Divilli’s Langi, 2024, is a portrait of her niece Violet, which “personifies the pride that goes with belonging, skills, knowing about your heritage and living within your culture.” Gerwyn Davies is a queer artist who works across photography, textile, and costume. He takes a “performative approach to photographic portraiture, exploring self-representation, camp aesthetics and kitsch Australiana.” His Bather, 2024, is a delightful example of that.

Zev and Nick, 2025 © Hilary Wardhaugh

Langi, 2024 © Mary-Lou Orliyarli Divilli

 

Bather, 2024 © Gerwyn Davies

T W Baker’s image Waiting on the Wet, 2024 has an interesting back story. It was taken in between massive afternoon downpours. A roll of Italian, medium-format cinema film jammed in Baker’s camera, but he managed to salvage and store it in a light-tight pouch away from the brutal sun and humidity. Two days later that pouch was opened by a curious member of the Darwin Airport security team. A week later, after processing the film in Sydney, it appeared that the harsh Top End of Australia had left its mark.

Waiting on the wet, 2024 © T W Baker

Jennie Groom’s Lola in utero, 2024 is a very different image of pregnancy. Indeed, a most unusual portrait. It is both clever and effective, a fine monochrome study.

Lola in utero, 2024 © Jennie Groom

 

Laura Zviedre’s Hands, 2024 is a delightful portrayal of a child - one of his hands holding his parents’ hands whilst his other one rests on his mother’s growing belly. It is all about love.

Hands, 2024 © Laura Zviedre

Back in 1995, Raoul Slater and his father Peter produced a lavishly illustrated book, Photographing Australia's Birds. More recently, he has been working in the medium of wet plate collodion, the pre-eminent photographic technology of the 1860s. His selected finalist work Muni, 2024 is a fine example of that medium.

Muni, 2024 - Raoul Slater

There are two other artworks that I found myself studying for lengthy periods of time. Michael Cook’s Individuation – Persona 2024 and Dida Sundet’s Philomela 2024. Cook’s works interrogate the legacy of colonisation and invite viewers to experience roles in reversal and histories re-written. This particular artwork ponders his life and that of his friend and artistic collaborator, Joey Gala. It recreates a scene from Greco-Roman mythology that depicts rape and is my favourite work in the exhibition. Through feminist intervention, it “alters perspective and challenges established gendered tropes.” Again, there is so much to see – movement in the woman’s arms, cyanotypes in the fabric, a toy held by a hand under the food-laden structure, and much more.

Individuation - Persona, 2024 © Michael Cook

Philomela, 2024 © Dida Sundet

Overall, this is a splendid exhibition, perhaps the best selection of finalists yet in this annual major Prize. Whilst we do not know what other works were amongst the thousands not selected (except for our own if we entered), the judges are to be commended for their 48 choices – all of which can be seen online here.

A longer review is available on the author's blog here and in the December 25 issue of The Printer (pp 16-22) here.

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With Nature

Exhibition Review: Visual Art | Brian Rope

With Nature | Bridget Baskerville, Megan Cope, Wendy Dawes, Marley Dawson, Sammy Hawker, Annika Romeyn (curated by Alexander Boynes)

CCAS Lakeside | 10 February - 6 April 2024

With Nature is about environmental changes happening because of us. Six contemporary Australian artists address the issues, aligning the materials they employ in their studios to convey their messages.

The landscape has influenced their work outcomes, revealing our impacts on Earth’s transformation. Humans have the ability to collaborate, but we need to explore our frequent failure to do so with respect to nature. These artists, working in photography, drawing, sculpture and textiles, ask “how can we collaborate with our natural environment to better understand how to live a sustainable future on this planet?”

Kamberri/Canberra-based Sammy Hawker is showing a number of her marvellous salt works here. These photographs (created across the Yuin Nation on Walbunja & Djiringanj Country) explore repeated motifs presented by salt in the ocean. Her experimental technique challenges traditional approaches to film development and cultivates a deeper connection between art and nature. She allows the environment to shape the outcome saying, “the crosses and fractals feel like signs of sentience, marks of the deeper frequency” and “Earth’s oceans were created from forms of water that came from outer space - a combination of icy comets and grains of solar dust. It feels the oceans hold material memory of this interstellar resonance.”

Murramarang NP #1, 2020 – Pigment inkjet print 110 x 110 cm © Sammy Hawker

Emerging artist Bridget Baskerville has previously explored the effect of extractive industries on waterways around her Kandos hometown. Dead River (2023) shown here originated from a 2023 residency in Queenstown, Lutruwita/Tasmania when she explored how the Queen River, one of Australia's most polluted waterways, interacted with immersed copper plates. A 2-channel video shows her work in progress, and a superb set of corroded copper plates created by an etching process in the water, reveal bright orange rust patterns. The plates indicate the impact of extractive industries on water systems.

Dead River, (detail) 2023, corroded copper plates,
2 channel video, dimensions variable © Bridget Baskerville

 Annika Romeyn, another Kamberri/Canberra-based artist contributes more corrosion/rust in a very different artwork. This artist combines watercolour, drawing and printmaking processes to create intricate and immersive works on paper looking to convey a restorative experience of being in nature, focussing on the threshold of rock and water. Wana Karnu (2024) is a spectacular multi-panel rust and ink drawing which captures her experience of walking gravelly ridges in Mutawintji National Park at sunset. The work reveals rich colours of iron oxide and 'rock rust' formed when iron, oxygen and water interact.

Wana Karnu (detail) - rust and ink, 2024 on Rives BFK 300gsm paper
240X360cm © Annika Romeyn

Quandamooka artist Megan Cope, from Minjerribah/North Stradbroke Island, is known for her site-specific sculptural installations, public art, and paintings. She blended art and conservation with Indigenous history and practice in her impressive large-scale midden installation Whispers at the entrance to the Sydney Opera House in 2023. Comprising a 14m wall and 200 timber Kinyingarra Guwinyanba poles covered in Kinyingarra (oyster) shells, it emphasised the resilience, and historic erasure, of First Nations custodianship, culture and Country at the world-renowned site. Here again we are asked to consider the role of art in bringing about cultural and ecological change. A single channel video reveals the landscape of country. It is well worth watching. It clearly reveals what we all should be looking for and seeing wherever in this land we live or visit.

'Kinyingarra Guwinyanba' 2022, Burogari (Cyprus Pine), Kinyinyarra (Sydney Rock Oyster) shell and stainless-steel trace wire Photo by Cian Sanders © Megan Cope

Wendy Dawes has created a remarkable perpetual motion machine, using an overhead projector with a deconstructed monitor to show, on a screen, permanent marker drawings on transparency film. A meter measuring power consumption during the exhibition acknowledges the artist's personal use of resources and highlights the need for more renewable energy sources.

'Perpetual Motion Machine' (work in progress), 2024 © Wendy Dawes

Using chemistry, mechanics and construction techniques, Marley Dawson creates sculptures and installations that highlight some outlandish aspects of our world and ourselves. He is dedicated to pushing the limits of what is considered to be art and encouraging dialogue about the wonders of our environment and ourselves. One of his contributions to this exhibition is a stunning and high-quality artwork constructed from brass, steel and timber and utilising electrics to produce a mesmerising hum from brass pieces vibrating against each other.

Hum (Louis + Morris), 2022, brass, steel, timber, electrics, 184 x 71 x 6cm – Marley Dawson

Concluding his curator’s essay, Alexander Boynes writes “Together, these six artists demonstrate art's ability to prompt introspection, foster conversation, and inspire action in addressing environmental challenges.”

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

SALT

Photography | Brian Rope

Salt | Sammy Hawker

(including Dark Crystals collaboration | Sammy Hawker, Jessica Hamilton & Sam Tomkins)

Mixing Room Gallery | 9 Feb – 25 Mar 2023

Salt is a new exhibition by ACT-based visual artist Sammy Hawker. A substantial crowd (perhaps 200) at the opening was simply buzzing with conversation and excitement. 

Hawker attracted early attention when her work Boy in Versailles was selected by renowned photographer Bill Henson for the 2010 Capture the Fade exhibition in Sydney. And it was the people’s choice winner.

Then we were all impressed in 2019 with her video Dieback about the eerie phenomena of mass tree extinction - white gums in the Snowy-Monaro. Along her artistic journey since, Hawker has had significant success. This exhibition once again delivers. As Senior Curator of Visual Arts at Canberra Museum and Gallery, Virginia Rigney, said in her opening remarks, Hawker’s use of the familiar substance of salt reveals new mysteries. 

This exhibition includes works from recent trips across Australia, travelling from the East Coast (the Yuin Nation and Arakwal Country) to Kati Thanda - Lake Eyre (Arabana Country). Taking her ‘studio’ with her, spending significant time at each location to understand it, then co-creating art by processing photos where they were exposed using traces of salt found at the sites to lift the emulsion and alter the documentary images. Hawker speaks of places where a quiet magic resonates; where the water leaves the blood sparkling in your veins; where the horizon disappears - and the sound of nothingness compresses around you.

Hawker’s process brings an essence of Country into her work, painting its way onto negatives and sharing deep and mysterious forces around us that transform her photographs. The details in Broulee Salt Sketch from 2020 show that very clearly. So too do Did I Dream You Dreamt About Me? and Everything is Waiting for You.

Broulee Salt Sketch (Details), 2020 © Sammy Hawker

Did I Dream You Dreamt About Me © Sammy Hawker

Everything is Waiting for You © Sammy Hawker

Two Lake Eyre works are amongst the standout images, Epiphanous and Kati Thanda - Lake Eyre, both featuring delicious pastel tones and the latter revealing a selected pattern from high above.

Epiphanous [Kati Thanda - Lake Eyre] © Sammy Hawker

Kati Thanda - Lake Eyre [From the Skies #2] © Sammy Hawker

Amongst the black and white images, Everything is Waiting for You and Did I Dream You Dreamt About Me? each pose numerous questions. The latter demanded I grab a phone shot of someone reflected in it, dreamily exploring. And the inclusion of Hawker’s 2022 Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize winning work, Mount Gulaga, is a bonus for those who have not previously seen it. 

Mount Gulaga © Sammy Hawker

There is also a marvellous collaborative work between Hawker, Jessica Hamilton & Sam Tomkins. It explores the possibilities around generating dialogue between image, sound and form.

Their starting point is Hawker’s image, Dark Crystals, a work processed with ocean water at Mollymook, NSW (Yuin Nation) in 2021. Hamilton has a special connection to the place this image was created and was inspired to use the visual data along the horizon line of the image to create a spectrogram. It picked up the varied textures deposited on the negative by the ocean’s salt. She then converted the spectrogram into a waveform and processed it through a synthesiser to create a sound piece.

Dark crystals Waveform horizon © Sammy Hawker, Jessica Hamilton & Sam Tomkins

Next, Tomkins designed and created a chladni plate (use your favourite search engine for information) to respond to the sounds. When the plate is oscillating with certain frequencies, the salt on top creates distinct patterns. Hawker used an online pitch detector to break down the various notes/frequencies in the sound piece. Played through the plate, the visual patterns formed - such as 1041.8 Hz - C6 are intriguing. 

1041.8 Hz - C6 © Sammy Hawker, Jessica Hamilton & Sam Tomkins

 I look forward to more exciting outcomes from these collaborators.

The exhibition is more than just printed images. There are negatives on display too and, perhaps best of all, a great journal of Hawker’s words along with numerous images worthy of close examination.

This review was first published in The Canberra Times on page 5 of Panorama and online here. It is also available on the author's blog here.

WE ARE ONE - The First XI

Photography | Brian Rope

WE ARE ONE - The First XI | Claire Letitia Reynolds and Sasha Parlett

PhotoAccess | 20 Jan – 10 Feb 2023

Everyone should see this exhibition. All indigenous people, because it is about a significant event in their history. Cricketers and cricket lovers, as it’s a significant cricket story. Historians, since it’s a historical event. Photographers and everyone interested in the medium. And everyone else, as it’s a fascinating and important story.

The portraits in WE ARE ONE - The First XI were produced by artist Claire Letitia Reynolds, the filmed interviews by Sasha Parlett. Reynolds discovered her love of photography at 14. She is known for capturing subjects at their most familiar moments. Parlett is the proud descendant of the first Indigenous woman to break in horses, was born on Darumbal country and educated and raised in Kabi Kabi ways. Together, the two artists are aiming to champion this epic piece of Australian history.

Parlett’s two videos are a series of vignette interviews providing a documentary style look into the verbal history of cricket in Australia. Through discussions with descendants of The First XI, past and current First Nations Cricketers, a

light is shed on the truths and triumphs such cricketers have faced since The First XI. Highlighting a forgotten history of this colonial sport turning stockmen into athletes and becoming an iconic sport within First Nations communities. The exhibition aims to uplift and contribute to reconciliation in Australia.

Still from Part 1 - WE ARE ONE –The First XI -
Uncle Adrian, Mununjalli, Goreng Goreng Nations, QLD © Sasha Parlett

Still of title page of Part 2 – WE ARE ONE – First Nations Cricket © Sasha Parlett

Reynolds’ artworks, created utilising analogue and digital processes, comprise twenty-two portraits and three landscapes referencing the unique connection between Australian Indigenous people, culture and Country. The First XI included men from tribes in Victoria, NSW and Queensland. The portraits are of current and past Indigenous Australian cricketers, direct descendants of the First XI, and Elders. 

Incredibly, this indigenous team of thirteen athletes undertook Australia’s first ever international tour. It is a story of strength, triumph and, sadly, tragedy. Several players suffered severe illness. Some were sent home early; others lost their lives. Despite the tragic incidents, the ledger was 14 apiece at the end of the England-wide tournament.

This exhibition seeks to square up the Australian identity ledger, with these pioneering men providing impetus for progress. Their story of courage, resilience, and identity is celebrated with pride. The beautifully printed artworks from hand-developed films are mostly on fine art paper using handcrafted dyes from various trees, bark, leaves, and sap. 

Rosie, Gubbi Gubbi Nation, QLD, 2022 photographic print on fine art paper
with narrow-leaved Red Gum bark hand crafted dye © Claire Letitia Reynolds

Aunty Betty, Bundjalung Nation, NSW, 2022 photographic print on fine art paper
with Brown Bloodwood bark hand crafted dye © Claire Letitia Reynolds

Uncle Mickey AM, Yawuru Nation, WA, 2022 photographic print on fine art paper
with Brown Bloodwood bark hand crafted dye © Claire Letitia Reynolds

One large portrait, of Aunty Fiona Clarke, is printed on 100% pure mulberry silk and displayed hung on a found Eucalyptus branch. 

Aunty Fiona Clarke, Gudintjimara, Kirre Whurrong Nations, VIC photographic print on 100% pure mulberry silk © Claire Letitia Reynolds (Installation view)

Three landscapes showing black swans are hung close together in a row alongside each other on an end wall of the gallery.

Black Swans of Gunaduyen, Home of The First XI, Parts 1,2,3 photographic prints on fine art paper with Grey Ironbark hand crafted dye © Claire Letitia Reynolds (Installation View)

Below each portrait are quotes from  ‘Cricket walkabout : the Australian Aboriginal cricketers on tour, 1867-8 / D.J. Mulvaney’. Part of one reads “Yanggendyinadyuk/Dick-a-Dick challenged all comers to stand 15 or 20 yards distant and pelting with cricket balls….protected his body with a [narrow wooden parrying shield]….during his displays he often called out to the throwers ‘Can’t you do better than that?’….His wooden club is now in Lord’s Cricket Museum.”

There is one other rather special exhibit - The First XI Didge-Bat, with the names of The First XI inscribed.

The project was previously exhibited briefly on the Sunshine Coast (where Reynolds is based). It opened here as a big bash cricket fixture next door attracted a huge crowd by comparison. Its run includes the contentious 26 January date. It will be going to the home of The First XI - Harrow, Victoria and elsewhere. It is hoped to show it at Lord’s. And, more importantly, I was pleased to learn there are folk seeking to have items such as the previously mentioned club returned to Country.

This review was first published by The Canberra Times here and in its print edition of 28/1/23. It is also available on the author's blog here.

 

Acts of Co-Creation

Photography, Photoart | Brian Rope

Acts of Co-Creation | Sammy Hawker

Mixing Room Gallery | Until 2 July 2021

Sammy Hawker is a visual artist who was noticed early when one of her works was selected for the 2010 ‘Capture the Fade’ exhibition. Since then, Hawker has achieved a Bachelor of Visual Arts (First Class Honours), Sydney College of the Arts (2015), had a solo exhibition ‘Dieback’ (2019), participated in the ANU School of Art & Design Bundian Way Arts Exchange (2020), and received an artsACT Homefront grant to complete a body of work (2020). She is a current recipient of the PhotoAccess Dark Matter darkroom residency program, with an exhibition in the Huw Davies Gallery scheduled for late 2021.

The works in this exhibition have been created in Yuin Country, Ngarigo Country, and Ngunawal Country. Whilst visiting each site, Hawker took a few rolls of film and collected small samples of water, soil, eucalyptus bark and flowers. The show features a stunning collection of works employing pigment inks, emulsions and silver nitrate.

In her process statement for the exhibition, Hawker speaks of time defined by silences – whilst standing in a once-familiar landscape while the ash of a torched ecosystem floated through the air; looking in awe at critically endangered snow-gums; living alone in a city under global lockdown. She reveals that silences led her to practise more active listening; that the exhibition results “from recognising and celebrating the quieter but no less potent agency of the more-than human”.

Broulee Sunset © Sammy Hawker

Hawker also speaks of a newly formed relationship with Ngunawal custodian Tyronne Bell. As a non-Indigenous Australian, she reached out to Bell to learn more about the sites she was working with. Walking with him on Country helped her see more.

Dark Crystals © Sammy Hawker

For each print, we are told what indigenous land it was created on. There are a few traditional landscapes, some composites, and many that reveal their negatives having been processed in solutions that include a variety of waters containing diverse elements.

Murramarang NP #1  © Sammy Hawker

When processing films Hawker uses waters collected from the sites where the films were exposed. So, salt fractals form across works created with ocean water, whilst ripples appear on photographs developed with muddy lake water. Storm clouds photographed from Mount Ainslie were developed with rainwater that fell later that day.

Near Rosedale © Sammy Hawker

Experiments with the technique of chromatography add another aspect to the exhibition. Hawker mixed samples of matter with sodium hydroxide looking for the substance “to visually express itself over filter paper soaked with silver nitrate”. She says “Acts of Co-Creation are never predictable, and the resulting images can be both unsettling and thrilling. To me the image becomes alive; humming with the presence of the site itself.”

Scribbly Gum Bark Chromatogram © Sammy Hawker

Much background information is provided - about snow gums being affected by dieback; about how and why a water bowl tree was created to store water.

A centrepiece of the exhibition, Ngungara (Lake George) #1, was taken after rains had temporarily filled the lake. Ngungara means ‘flat water’ and the lake is a significant site for the Ngunawal. From a roll of medium format film, it was processed with a jar of muddy water collected from the edge of the lake.

Ngungara (Lake George) #1 © Sammy Hawker

Also displayed is a collection of the bottled waters, plus seaweed film developer and such things as casuarina pods, ground up bark and lichen. It is an excellent exhibition where I spent a lot of time taking it in. I was delighted to see that many works had been sold, some of the proceeds benefitting Aboriginal corporations in the Yuin, Ngarigo, and Ngunawal Countries. I congratulate the purchasers and Hawker, and strongly recommend readers to visit this exhibition.

This review was first published in The Canberra Times here. It is also on the author's own blog here.