Exhibition Review: Visual Art | Brian Rope

Creek I Kirsten Wehner

M16Artspace, Gallery 2 I 24 January - 16 February 2025

Kirsten Wehner is a research-centred artist, curator, producer and writer living and working in Ngunnawal Country (Canberra). In her practice the artist works across a number of disciplines. She creates accessible writing, participatory experiences, sculpture installations, and a variety of visual media works.

Wehner is a Co-Director of Catchment Studio, an ACT-based independent creative platform transforming people’s relationships with waterways. She is also Co-Chair of the Board of the Cad Factory, an artist-led organisation based in Narrandera, NSW which collaborates ethically with people and place to create a local, national and international program of experimental work. And this busy artist also contributes to the committee of Plumwood Mountain, a unique 120-hectare heritage-listed private property near Braidwood, NSW which was handed back to the Walbunja people of the Yuin Nation in 2024 - the first time such a property has been gifted to an Aboriginal community.

Wehner is the M16 Artspace/ConceptSix Environmental Artist-in-Residence for 2024/5. Significant recent projects in which she has been involved include the National Museum of Australia pop-up touring installation River Country, the documentary More than a Fish Kill which explored how artists, fishery managers, and First Nations custodians processed 2019 and 2023 fish death events along the Darling River, and Finding Weston, Considering Country, a Traditional Custodian-led series of on Country walks. She has explored how disordered and unloved waterways can be re-imagined as holders of story and sites of cultural/ecological potential.

So where and what is Weston Creek? Located in south-western Canberra where a suburb carries its name, the creek was in the past “an intermittent stream, a system of rills, soaks and wetlands vibrantly alive with plants, insects and birds. Today, the waterway is largely piped and drained, forced underground or encased in concrete, struggling with pollution from street run-off and largely invisible to people who live in the area. And yet the creek is still there. Wehner says it is “flowing as it can, supporting life as it can, creating traces that ask us to know it.”

Immediately upon entering the gallery to see the artist’s exhibition, simply titled Creek, I was drawn to the framework of gathered sticks which invites us to imagine the creek as it once was. That, of course, is very much a part of what good artists do – they imagine things and invite those of us who see their artworks to do likewise.

Kirsten Wehner_Creek (installation view)_2024_Image Brenton McGeachie, courtesy the artist

Creek explores life along the Weston Creek waterway, asking what it might mean to care better for this particular disordered place. Inspired by talks and walks with Ngunawal Elders Uncle Wally Bell and Aunty Karen Denny that considered the creek as Country, Wehner explores some of the ways in which people connect with and seek to look after places along this waterway.

Just to the left of the stick structure some words about the exhibition pose a few questions adding to what we might think about. How might we respect and nurture Ngunawal wisdom? How does the work done by local park care groups sit alongside the invasive re-engineering of the creek’s flows? How can we listen to such waterways?

In what she appropriately describes as the “bends and eddies of the stick structure”, Wehner shows us some delightful watercolour and pastel works revealing what volunteers have done. Can we see how their efforts near to invasive engineering have contributed to the restoration of native habitat, despite the legacies of concrete drains?

Kirsten Wehner_Channel_2024_Image Brenton McGeachie, courtesy the artist

Other artworks in this excellent show incorporate ideas of fracture, using multiple panels or separated surfaces so we might avoid seeing the waterway simply as a ‘view.’

Kirsten Wehner_Flow Story_2024_Image Brenton McGeachie, courtesy the artist

Kirsten Wehner_Liferafts_2024_Image Brenton McGeachie, courtesy the artist

I considered how we humans think of fractures as something that occurs when our bones are broken, interfering with our everyday tasks. Then I thought about fractures in the land, caused naturally or by human interventions. Whether fractures occur naturally or otherwise, proper diagnosis and treatment are crucial for effective healing and recovery. Wehner is effectively encouraging us to understand that.




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

CITY COMMISSIONS - PORTRAITS

 Photography | Brian Rope

CITY COMMISSIONS - PORTRAITS | SAMMY HAWKER

Tuggeranong Town Centre (on windows of Lakeview House & under the Soward Way Bridge) | Until 4 July 2022

Installation shot - Under Soward Way bridge (supplied)

Sammy Hawker is a visual artist working predominantly on Ngunawal Country. She works predominantly with analogue photography techniques and often works closely with Traditional Custodians, scientists and ecologists.

In 2021 Hawker had two highly successful solo shows as part of a PhotoAccess darkroom residency. She is currently an artist-in-residence with the CORRIDOR project and is also preparing for another solo show before year end.

Over the last six months Hawker worked closely with nine young people from Headspace Tuggeranong exploring ways they could co-create photographic portraits. This was part of a City Commissions project delivered by Contour 556, one of seven artsACT initiatives in the Creative Recovery and Resilience Program.

Headspace is a safe space that welcomes and supports young people aged 12–25, their families, friends and carers, helping them to find the right services. Learning the Headspace motto “clear is kind”, Hawker realised her project was also about finding clarity as a form of self-compassion - shining light on what for many was a particularly dark and confusing time.

Hawker challenges the notion that a photograph constitutes the moment that a shutter is released. She explores ways of making, rather than taking, images. She wanted the project to be empowering - with no right or wrong and where the final photographs celebrated identity and experience beyond just the way her subjects looked in the frame. It was an opportunity to realise we always have some choice whether we repress difficult experiences.

The portraits of the young people were captured on a large format film camera. Commonly, in photographic practice, touch and marks on negatives are to be avoided. But Hawker invited her subjects to handle, manipulate, scratch or even bury negatives in order to introduce something of themselves. The young folk wrangled puppies, dived into rivers, got dressed up, sprinkled bushfire ash on negatives and processed film in the Headspace carpark.

Each participant was invited to use the project to reflect on their experiences of difficult times. Their statements relating to the images reveal resilience and hope.

Chanelle reflected about living in the moment. The negative of her portrait, showing her immersed in the Murrumbidgee River, was processed with water from that river, ocean water and permanent marker.

Chanelle © Sammy Hawker

Sophie spoke of learning to embrace everything in life. Her portrait’s negative was processed with bushfire ash and the word Embrace scratched into it. The ash creates a frame that embraces her.

Sanjeta really likes her photo with jellyfish manipulations as metaphors for how she now goes with the flow of her life journey. Her expression conveys a “so be it” attitude. The negative was processed with Murrumbidgee water, rainwater, seaweed and chemical stains.

Sanjeta © Sammy Hawker

Ray wanted to keep connected and bring some joy into the lives of others. The portrait’s beaming smile conveys joy. The idea of processing the negative with Whiz Pop Bang bubble mixture and wattle pollen adds to the joy.

Ray's Statement

Jazzy is photographed with her much loved dog Milo. So, of course, the processing of the negative utilised Milo’s pawprints.

Jazzy © Sammy Hawker



Devante © Sammy Hawker

Installation shot - Under Soward Way bridge (supplied)

When I reviewed her Acts of Co-Creation show (for which she received a Canberra Critics Circle Award) in this publication, I wrote of Hawker’s then newly formed relationship with Ngunawal custodian Tyronne Bell who helped her to learn about sites she was working with. For this project, Hawker arranged for Bell to escort her subjects walking Ngunawal Country, providing a healing experience for them.

I strongly recommended readers to visit City Commissions - Portraits - and reflect on your own difficult times.

An edited version of this review was published in The Canberra Times of 28/6/22 on the Capital Life page, and the full version online here. It is also 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.