2024 Concept to Publication

Exhibition Review: Visual Art | Brian Rope

Concept to Publication | Andrea Bryant, George Kriz, Meredith Krust-McKay, Louise Maurer, Helena Romaniuk, Sari Sutton

PhotoAccess Gallery I 28 November 2024 – 21 December 2024

This exhibition is the outcome of the 2024 Concept to Publication workshop series conducted by Photo Access. After nine months of mentorship by David Hempenstall exploring the art of the photobook, the participants have created new bodies of work showcasing their unique photographic styles in books.

There is quite a variety of book types on display. Not unexpectedly, the subjects and types of images in them vary considerably. Of even greater interest though is the varied styles of books. Some are traditional and commercially printed photobooks. Others are cleverly handmade and quite fascinating to see. 

Andrea Bryant is displaying four separate books. Unleashed has just eight images of Scrivener Dam overflows during major rain events. It has a ribbon hinge accordion binding with a marbled cover. Upright has only six monochrome images in a concertina binding with flag pouches for the images. Both these books were crafted for the artist by Joy Tonkin of Bookarts Canberra.

Unleashed by Andrea Bryant – installation photo by Eunie Kim

Upright by Andrea Bryant – installation photo by Eunie Kim

Footloose is a whimsical exploration of feet and shoes. Unnamed is abstracts of our urban landscapes. The imagery in both these books challenge us to appreciate them. 

Footloose by Andrea Bryant – installation photo by Eunie Kim

George Kriz presents Holding On, Letting Go. It is a tribute to his beloved wife Marjorie who passed away at the start of 2024. This is an artwork speaking to us about letting go and saying goodbye. The artist invites viewers to contemplate the transient nature of our existence. Whilst the physical book is not entirely easy to handle and explore because of its somewhat complex structure, viewing the accompanying powerful video is a most moving experience.

Holding On, Letting Go by George Kriz – installation photo by Eunie Kim

Meredith Krust-McKay invites us to get Up Close and enjoy the beauty of birds. The images of the avian world are excellent, and the chosen types of handmade books are fine choices, in the artist’s words “conveys parallels between the structure and delicacy of the feathered subject matter and the intricacies of one book form.”

Up Close by Meredith Krust-McKay - installation photo by Eunie Kim 

Up Close by Meredith Krust-McKay - installation photo by Eunie Kim

Louise Maurer’s contribution is titled Australian Tales. It is a creative imagining of explorer Charles Sturt’s search for an inland sea. It and her Memorial series about those who attempt to cross the waters but never find land became one in the process. Her “creative revision” method of developing the images has been beautifully used.

Australian Tales by Louise Maurer - installation photo by Eunie Kim 

Australian Tales by Louise Maurer - installation photo by Eunie Kim

Helena Romaniuk is showing photobooks about rust developed from her project which involved experimenting with templates, collages and colours. There are a number of books in her series titled Colour of Rust. Each one contains images of rusted metal surfaces, weathered machinery and forgotten relics. The textures, pattens and vibrant colours are effectively used to reveal unexpected beauty.

Colour of Rust by Helena Romaniuk - installation photo by Eunie Kim

Sari Sutton was a Dark Matter artist-in-residence at Photo Access this year. Her body of work, Dark Energy, was developed during the residency. Using archival Mount Stromlo imagery and botanical materials collected on site, photogram artworks inspired by astronomy and the cosmos were made – deliberately moving or placing objects on the photosensitive paper. Here the artist shows a photobook dummy of darkroom prints (which are the same 8x10 inch dimensions as her original silver gelatin prints) in a way which allows us to touch and hold them.

Dark Energy by Sari Sutton - installation photo by Eunie Kim

This exhibition is well worth a visit. It is a credit to the six participants, and to their mentoring by David Hempenstall. This annual program has delivered worthwhile creative results.

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

Poetry of Place

Exhibition Review: Photography | Brian Rope

Poetry of Place I Julia Charles

ANCA Gallery I 30 October - 17 November 2024

Julia Charles has tertiary qualifications in Landscape Architecture, Environmental Horticulture, and Photoimaging. She teaches in applied object design and is a self-employed photographer.

This artist’s photography exhibition Poetry of Place has been promoted as a collection of photographic works which reveal a rare way of seeing – offering an intimate distillation of beauty in the built landscape. I’m not sure that I agree with the use of the word rare, since I am familiar with the work of various other photographers who also find beauty in selected parts of buildings. However, I certainly accept that the images in this show portray beauty in the buildings photographed; indeed they do so most successfully. 

There are 26 giclee prints, mostly in rich black and white, on archival cotton rag fine art paper in the exhibition, plus a single non-photographic piece which is laminated oak veneer and charred Oregon. The prints are sensual studies of the built form. When visiting the display, I asked the artist, Julia Charles, why she had opted to include the latter piece of artwork and was pleased to hear in response that she simply felt it belonged there – because it certainly fits with the overall portrayal of beauty.

Charles has a background in furniture making, landscape architecture and lecturing in art and design. So it is unsurprising that she included sculptural “timbers.” She also describes herself as an architectural and fine art photographer. Once again it is not a surprise therefore that the photographs are of elements of the architecture of buildings – most, she told me, being in Sydney, whilst about four portray places in Canberra. I have no doubt whatsoever that all Canberrans would instantly recognise, in Untitled #22, the landmark that is the Australian Academy of Science’s Shine Dome building.

Untitled #22, 2024 © Julia Charles

None of the artworks are titled so, whilst studying each of them we could, if we wished, try to name the buildings we were looking at. But in many cases of course we would be unsuccessful – perhaps because it is a building with which we are not familiar, or maybe we simply do not recognise the specific elements the artist has included in her photographic creation. I wonder how many exhibition visitors have been able to attach a building name to Untitled #3.

Untitled #3, 2016 © Julia Charles

Camilla Block, of Durbach Block Jaggers architects, has written “Julia Charles has an unerring artistic eye. She convincingly translates sculptural weight and power within a two dimensional medium. Julia’s pictures are somehow unafraid, deftly stepping toward feeling, shadow and beauty.” Untitled #2, the image used by the ANCA gallery to promote the exhibition is only one of the exhibits that show the artist’s keen artistic eye.

Untitled #2, 2016 © Julia Charles

The artist herself says she tries to create pictures that have a poetic quality. She works slowly, finding from experience that her patience is rewarded. As I moved around the displayed works and looked into them, I saw how Charles had explored the light and shadows being cast on her subjects and used them to remove unwanted material. I observed how she had explored the qualities of reflected, diffused and dappled light and created images revealing elements in the architecture that are beautiful and which sensitively express emotions. Untitled #4 is a fine example of her use of light and shadow.

Untitled #4, 2016 © Julia Charles

The exhibition’s title is most appropriate as the artworks combine design and art, uncovering the "poetry of place" to produce minimalist, graphic, and sculpture-based compositions.

Readers who are unable to visit this exhibition might like to look at the artist’s works on her webpages here.

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

The Spectral Lens

Photography Review | Brian Rope

The Spectral Lens | Carolyn Craig, Damian Dillon, Clare Humphries, Roy Lee, David Manley & Justine Roche

Photo Access | 12 September – 12 October 2024

Promotional material for this exhibition, The Spectral Lens, refers to strategies of ‘hauntology’ and the spectre. I was familiar with ‘spectre’ referring to ghosts and haunting, but what was hauntology I asked myself. Some research revealed “the philosophical concept of Hauntology (a portmanteau of haunting and ontology, also spectral studies, spectralities or the spectral turn) is a range of ideas referring to the return or persistence of elements from the social or cultural past, as in the manner of a ghost. ……. first introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida in his 1993 book Spectres of Marx. …. since been invoked in fields such as visual arts…..” So there you have it (if you were also wondering).

Curator (and exhibitor) Carolyn Craig has written a substantial essay for the exhibition catalogue, which refers to an era of multi-perspectival loss (and gain) and speaks about our bodies attempting to find a stable horizon by ingesting an overconsumption of belief via the image. We read that  “the viewfinder moves into a fetishist past aligned with an almost renaissance nostalgia – while the JPEG empire consumes the single lens apparatus in an overload and discharge of normative cultural production.”

Having previously read the promotional material and the catalogue, I wondered what I was going to see – indeed whether I would even begin to understand the artworks. The answer is, as so often the case, that I will need more time to think about the imagery whilst also re-reading all the catalogue. In the meantime, I need to write some words of my own here about the exhibits.

The first pieces seen as I entered were those of Craig titled Who Gets the Rose - UV prints on Perspex, mounted on welded steel frames, with videos of slow-moving clouds looping in screens on the floor below.

Who Gets the Rose, 2023 © Carolyn Craig (Installation photo by Eunie Kim)

Next, Justine Roche is showing 24 Hours (although a bio in the catalogue also refers to her series Dark Eden), comprising 24 wet plate collodions on aluminium, one on a smallish wall with the others in a long row on the adjoining long wall. They are each 12.7 x 15.2 cm, so need close inspection to see the imagery. Some are quite beautiful, whilst others are so dark as to hide their contents from my eyes.

24 hours, 2020 © Justine Roche (Installation photo by Eunie Kim)

Damian Dillon contributes 2 C-type prints of the same subject in one acrylic mount and large UV prints on white steel supported by plastic crates. Roy Lee has 2 archival inkjet prints. Clare Humphries contribution is one framed archival inkjet print. Of these various works, I was particularly impressed by Lee’s. His glorious works held my attention and drew me back to explore their detail.

Contemporary ruin #4, 2024 © Damian Dillon (Installation photo by Eunie Kim)

History of Sky, 2022 © Roy Lee (Installation photo by Eunie Kim)

David Manley provides something quite different. One of his works, appropriately titled Brute, is created from cardboard, cement and brick. Two are excellent inkjet prints. His final exhibit is a single channel video titled Plume, projected low down on a gallery wall, seemingly upside down – a plume of reddish dust/smoke was falling downwards whilst I was watching part of its 16:57 minutes.

Far left: Brute, 2023 © David Manley

Rear left: Plume, 2017 (single channel video) © David Manley

Top right: Ekleipsis Apertura, 2024 © Clare Humphries

(Installation photo by Eunie Kim)

Each of these six artists is highly qualified and has an impressive CV. They have a variety of tertiary qualifications, exhibit regularly – sometimes overseas, and have achieved successes in various Prizes. They frequently exhibit together as a group. Some work in a number of different media. Some have been published in journals and books. Others are represented in public collections. And, as Craig writes in her catalogue essay, “each artist contributes to a gathering of potential ways forward sensing and knowing via affect.”

Yes, it might be a challenging exhibition (and catalogue), but we all need to be challenged to grow as art lovers or art makers. So, I need to stop here and return to thinking about these works and re-reading the catalogue.

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

MONACHOPSIS

Exhibition Review: Photography | Brian Rope

MONACHOPSIS | Hilary Wardhaugh

CCAS Manuka | 14 – 24 March 2024

Speaking at the opening of her exhibition, local long-established career professional photographer, Hilary Wardhaugh, announced it was the first step in her new career as an artist. There was much laughter and positive response to that. Having long believed artists can emerge later in their life journeys – without undertaking formal tertiary art studies – I was delighted.

Wardhaugh has been capturing images for around 27 years, specialising in portrait, event, editorial and branding photography. But now, she proclaimed, a separate artist career was also underway.

In fact, this photographer’s website states that, more than a photographer, she considers herself an artist, activist/provocateur, volunteer and creator of community. It says her creative endeavours bring people together in the pursuit of a better world, her interest involves the human condition: irony and contradiction - and she also pursues topical and creative projects to highlight a theme or an issue, most recently climate change.

Wardhaugh has curated many projects involving women and photography; for example, Loud and Luminous (with Mel Anderson as co-Creator) and most recently a climate change project, The #everydayclimatecrisis Visual Petition, which achieved global recognition. Those projects have clearly demonstrated this photographer is an artist, activist, etc.

So this artist is very passionate about using photography as activism and demonstrating that through artistic, provocative and innovative means. And that is just what she is doing with this solo exhibition.

I had not previously heard the word monachopsis so turned to online sources seeking its meaning. I learned it is a new word, coined by writer John Koenig in his Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. It describes the feeling of being maladapted to your surroundings, like a seal on a beach. Monachopsis is temporary for most people and diminishes when the unfamiliar becomes familiar and new routines and unknown faces become norms.

I now know I have personally experienced monachopsis as a result of being in a new and not familiar situation. I’m sure everyone else has had the same type of experience. But have we had quite the type of experience Wardhaugh has put before us here?

The journey that has culminated in this exhibition actually began in June 2016 when Wardhaugh saw the Queanbeyan River’s bank was littered with what she has described as “the detritus of the capitalist Anthropocene era”, and as a “grim testament to our collective negligence.” The sight stirred within her “a potent blend of horror and introspection.”

However, these exhibited artworks were created later. Wardhaugh visited Indonesia’s Bintan Island, and Greece’s Santorini. Again, the artist saw vast quantities of waste on beaches. I only saw pristine beaches on those two islands when I visited them many years ago; clearly our personal experiences depend on where we go and when.

So, this exhibition of artworks by this emerging artist is very much a response to experiences, revealing her hope that nature might reclaim those beaches.

Portrait of a discarded plastic sunscreen bottles cultivated by molluscs on Bintan © Hilary Wardhaugh

Feral car reclaimed by prickly pear on Santorini © Hilary Wardhaugh

Derelict building spoiling the natural landscape on Santorini © Hilary Wardhaugh

The artist has also created a site-specific artwork, placing digital copies of waste objects she found onto a long decal laid on the gallery floor. Her aim was to make exhibition visitors reflect on their responsibility to our planet. During the opening numerous visitors unintentionally walked on that artwork.

There is a very large print filling the entire end wall of the gallery space. And there is to be a closing ticketed event with composer @ruthleemartin who has created three new pieces of music in response to the exhibition.

Everything in this splendid exhibition encourages reflection about human impact on the environment. It transports us into that unsettling place to which monachopsis refers. Wardhaugh’s belief that art can provoke valuable conversations and lead to meaningful action underpins her purpose. And she has most successfully achieved what she set out to do.

This review (in an abbreviated form) was first published by Canberra City News on 17 March 2024 here. It is also available on the author's blog here.

VIEW 2024

Photography Exhibition Review | Brian Rope

VIEW 2024 | Caleb Arcifa, Juncture Collective, Rose Hartley, Brittany Hefren, Emma Phillips, George Pople

Photo Access | 25 January - 9 March 2024

PhotoAccess has launched its 2024 Exhibition Program with VIEW2024, its annual showcase of emerging photo-media artists from the ACT and surrounding regions.

Caleb Arcifa shows us one work comprising silver gelatin photos and a mixed media installation. It’s interactive – touch it to create your auditory identity.

Brittany Hefren displays three delightful collages with holes cut in front prints revealing something of childhood’s imagined memories. In one work, wisteria not only creeps over a suburban front fence but spills out of a window on the house behind that fence.

Emma Phillips explores Artificial Intelligence. AI has created quite a storm with many people expressing diverse concerns whilst others see great benefits. There has been considerable discussion of it in the context of photography, with some groups banning it and others embracing it. Many photographers use it, perhaps even unwittingly, whilst post-processing their images with various software packages.

From Phillips we see what happened when the prompt “what is gender” in various languages was put into an image generator. The results perpetuated binary gender roles and the belief that heterosexual is the only normal and natural sexual orientation. And also affirmed the view that representing someone or something in an idealised way or through cultural stereotypes is appropriate. 

Emma Phillips, from Generative Genders, 2024

Rose Hartley shows us five works from Frames, an evolving series. She is looking to reveal the connections between people and the environments and settings in which they exist. These images are all interesting. I was particularly drawn to A Palestinian Wedding which shows a mirror reflection of a woman wearing a headpiece, close by a hairpiece that, presumably, she might wear to the wedding.

Rose Hartley, A Palestinian Wedding, 2018

Photo Access Director Alex Robinson’s catalogue essay tells us “The Juncture Collective brings together the work of several artists working with emerging technology to consider its social, political and economic impacts critically.”  The artists are Sophie Dumaresq, Rory Gillen and Emily April O’Neill. Dumaresq is probably the most well-known not just to Canberra audiences but, through her success – for example, as winner of the 2022 Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize – to a wider audience. She is displaying three artworks – one a digital print & mixed media. Another a digital video. The third an installation comprising a digital video, an expanse of fluffy pink carpet (also on the floor in her digital print), cow pillows and a beanbag.

O’Neill contributes an interactive installation with several parts. Gillen gives us a digital video. Both these artworks also have that fluffy pink on the floor below. Juncture’s works use emerging technologies – AI, DALL-E and ChatGPT - to critically consider their impacts. Whatever else you make of the Juncture artworks you will certainly find them absorbing - and yourself smiling.

Sophie Dumaresq (Juncture Collective), What's In A Postcard? Baby
I just wanted to make you smile, 2023

George People is responding to the dark aspects of this country’s military activities in Afghanistan, in particular the Ben Roberts Smith defamation trial. The artist set up his own “memorial” at the top of Anzac Parade in Canberra. His installation here includes the created video work, a tower of laptops (fortunately not burning as Roberts Smith was found guilty of doing), and one working laptop looping through pages from the 2020 Brereton Report which shed light on concealed war crimes. This is a powerful artwork, challenging viewers to think about the dominant military account.

George Pople, Additional Content, 2023

So, this exhibition emphasises photography's role in mirroring societal phenomena, with the artists delving into various contemporary issues. Analogue and digital photography, alternative processes, videos and installations - VIEW2024 provides a fascinating look at current trends.

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

Water

Photography Exhibition Review | Brian Rope

Water | Cristy Froehlich

The Link, Ginninderry, 1 McClymont Way, Strathnairn | 23 Jan - 3 Mar 2024

Canberra photographer Cristy Froehlich is so fascinated by droplets of water that she has brought them to life via her camera lens. In her exhibition, Water, Froehlich has produced images of her constructed interactions between water, light, time, colour, texture and oil. 

Froehlich has a Diploma in Photo Imaging and gained photographic accreditation through the now, sadly, defunct – after 75 years - Australian Institute of Professional Photography (AIPP). She was awarded the Epson 2017 ACT AIPP Emerging Photographer of the Year. 2024 is a watershed for Froehlich as she has just resigned from her Public Service position after a 20-year career. This will allow her to commit more time to her passions - photography and nature.

I have not seen an exhibition of this artist’s work previously. Indeed, my only knowledge of Froehlich was when she critiqued entries, including mine, at a Canberra Photographic Society event in November 2023. So it was most interesting to learn about her online.

You can see this artist’s works on her own website, plus Facebook and Instagram. You can learn from her by participating in her free monthly Be Curious Photo Walks (which have their own FB page, and there is a video about on YouTube). The more I read about Froehlich, the more I saw about her clear love of nature. She is soon to conduct courses about photo editing and macro photography for Nature Art Lab.

The nineteen images, plus several large acrylic tiles, on display in this exhibition were taken with the artist seated on a chair, with a tripod and camera set up. Froehlich has written “Water was dripped, dropped, placed, pushed and squeezed. It had oil, paint, food dye and glycerine added. Water was frozen, defrosted and soaked up.”

The resultant images displayed are eye-catching, graphic, conceptual and aesthetically pleasing. I have no doubt many would be delighted to have one or more of these artworks displayed on the walls of their own homes. Solidarity is just one example of a deliciously coloured fine art print matted and displayed within a white shadow box frame.

Solidarity - 51 x 51 cm Framed artwork © Cristy Froehlich

Frozen also has a range of colours but is a very different artwork. You might spend quite some time working out for yourself what plants have been used in its creation – if you think that matters.

Frozen - 51 x 51 cm Framed artwork © Cristy Froehlich

Not all the images are coloured in the sense that we usually use the word. Whilst black is a colour, you might simply see Disparity as a monochromatic image.

Disparity - 51 x 51 cm Framed artwork © Cristy Froehlich

Some prints are on cotton rag paper. Some are high gloss metallic prints. Others are described in the artist’s exhibition sheet as being fine art prints on delicate paper. Some of the artworks are displayed in white shadow box frames. Others are framed in black. And some have “delicate floating torn edges.” All reveal that Froehlich has an artist’s eye and presents each work in the way she believes it looks best. The variety in presentation is a bonus.

As already mentioned, there also are prints mounted on acrylic tiles. The artist speaks of these works as taking on a view of water or bubbles through water. One example, Escape, presents a quite intriguing image. It is described as taking on “the view of water when looked at through water.” Of course it doesn’t matter what it is we are looking at but, sometimes, the challenges of trying to work subjects out have a habit of drawing us right in. If you had this one on display in your home, I’d expect every visitor you had would want you to tell them about it.

Escape - 10 x 10 cm Acrylic block © Cristy Froehlich

 

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.

Brian Rope | Photography

Resistance Relapse | Nico Krijno

Photo Access | 29 June to 12 August

Resistance Relapse is an Australian premiere of esteemed Cape Town-based, South African artist Nico Krijno whose free-flowing creative process disrupts and transforms familiar, figurative representations into the realm of mirage and illusion. 

It builds on his extensive previous performance, sculpture and photography work. Here he has deliberately distorted, indeed reconfigured, imagery to create a landscape to challenge our preconceived notions of what constitutes landscapes. Traditional landscape photographers would most likely be appalled – but that is not a bad thing as all photographers (and other artists) need to be challenged to think about what they are doing and what their works are saying if they are to grow and develop in their chosen fields.

There are just three works in this theatrical show – the artist has a theatre background. There is a wonderful piece titled Resistance Relapse comprising a grid of 45 separate 21 by 15 cm inkjet prints in five rows each of nine images. It presents as a tapestry – traditionally a form of textile art that is woven by hand on a loom, but here a design printed on paper which could well be displayed in your home in the manner of a wall hanging.

Untitled, one of the 45 images in the series Resistance Relapse, 2023 © Nico Krijno

Secondly, there is pentagonal tray on the floor filled with sand. Portions of a dozen or so inkjet prints of varying sizes poke out of the sand, whilst the rest of them are buried beneath it. This piece is titled Resistance relapse (sandpit), 2023. Gabrielle Hall-Lomax’s catalogue essay suggests we are being invited to unveil newly discovered treasures, to expose the obscured and delve deeper into the artist’s creation. Has anyone dared to do so I wonder.

The third piece is a glorious single channel portrait-oriented video Die Son, 2023. A richly yellow shiny egg yolk rolls across someone’s hands - repulsing one visitor who can’t stand raw eggs, but fascinating and holding the attention of others. Other things flicker in the background – a bonfire burning, a child swimming, tomatoes cascading. There are also glimpses of other artworks by this artist.

A small exhibition in terms of the number of pieces on show, but a large one in terms of the artist’s concept, his different approaches to each artwork, and his challenges to our pre-existing and often conventional or traditional idea about landscape. Even the exhibition title requires contemplation as we explore the artworks and read the informative catalogue. 

As Hall-Lomax says in concluding her essay “….it is a philosophical invitation to traverse a world under different principles…..It shakes up the conventional and dismantles viewers’ pre-existing ideas about the nature of photography and its possibilities.” Serious photographers of any genre would do well to let themselves be challenged in such ways.

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

Whether World & From the Series ‘Light Jelly Sweet’

Animation, paintings, and photographs: Brian Rope

Moving image work: Whether World by Susan Bruce & From the Series ‘Light Jelly Sweet’ by Henry Hu

M16 Artspace | 14 April – 7 May2023

Whether World is by Susan Bruce, a moving image artist who describes the exhibition as a moving image work which considers whether the natural world (including trees, fungi, and aquatic life) communicates with humans and how humans communicate with the natural world. She questions how weather is experienced by our bodies and how we are changing everything through our activity.

Bruce is exhibiting in Canberra for the first time, so I turned to her website for background. Her practice also includes experimental short films, collage, drawings, prints and artist books. She is inspired by the textural qualities of film and the interrelationship between digital and analogue media.

Susan Bruce, Whether World (detail), 2022. Image still. Image courtesy of the artist

Writing about this show, Bruce shares “I am between two worlds. In one, I can see humans are crawling on the brown earth, butterflies are communicating with humans. Seeds are growing above the ground as well as underground. To me, trees are more valuable than diamonds. In my world, I float amongst the clouds, smell flowers, and swim underwater like a squid. I am free, and I am not ‘earth bound’.” Those charming words were a most useful backdrop to my viewing of her artwork.

Susan Bruce, Whether World (detail), 2022. Image still. Image courtesy of the artist

Without those words I would have seen fish, birds, gorillas and, yes, humans. I’d have seen the earth, underwater scenes and trees. I’d have noticed the drawings on her collages. But the backdrop helps us appreciate how Bruce sees people communicating with flowers and bees, and them communicating right back. She sees pigs in all their size and pinkness walking around us. She is saying to us that humans and non-humans co-exist, that humans are no longer at the top of the chain.

Susan Bruce, Whether World (detail), 2022. Image still. Image courtesy of the artist

Serendipitously, I viewed this exhibition the day after seeing the new documentary movie Giants, which is about some giants of Tasmanian ecological activism – former Greens leader Bob Brown and tall trees. Two days running, I found myself considering the same questions – how do we humans co-exist with all other forms of life on this planet? Where do we fit in the great scheme of living things? Have we any right to impact on the places where other life forms reside? That movie and this exhibition both successfully examine such questions.

From the Series ‘Light Jelly Sweet’, is new work by Henry Hu. Again, not previously familiar with this artist’s work, I went to his website. He began his practice using modern technological tools and easily accessible digital software creating artwork that engaged aspects of digital art and graphic design.

Later, Hu worked to incorporate digital creations into tangible forms. This delivered mixed-media paintings, lens-based works and computer-generated animation. What we see here are “testaments of existence as imagined, invented, remembered, and observed.” 

The artist has limited his tonal palette within each pleasing photograph and each mixed-media work - combining a multi-layered technique of paint pours with sand, gravel, twig, leaf, grass and wood. He describes this as a delicate manipulation of material that traces the ambiguity of nostalgia.

Henry Hu, the flint #38, 2022. pigment inkjet on cotton rag.38 x 26 cm Image courtesy of the Artist

There also are two pieces of abstract computer-generated animation conceived as an extension and companion to the static work. Sadly they’re displayed on small tablets with soundtracks accessed through tiny headphones. Turning on the tablets and locating the animations may defeat some.

Henry Hu, Velvet Fall (still image), 2023. Image courtesy of the Artist (1)

Henry Hu, Velvet Fall (still image), 2023. Image courtesy of the Artist (2)

I would have liked Hu’s excellent text about the series Light Jelly Sweet - on his website at https://henryhhu.com/works-two#ljs – to be displayed in the gallery. Here’s a taste: “Burning sun. Open air. Nature. The fields. The woods. A birch. A pine. An oak. Shades. Shadows. Clouds overhead. Streams beneath. They are gifts for a child. How unguarded we were, the early days.” (The full text is available in printed form at the front desk next to the room sheets.)

This review was first published by The Canberra Times on page 10 of Panorama and online on 29/4/23 here. It is also available on the author's blog here.