2024 Concept to Exhibition

Photography Exhibition Review | Brian Rope

Concept to Exhibition I James Bolto, Kate Leddick, Fernanda Pedroso, Albert Soesastro, James Whitehead

PhotoAccess Gallery I 28 November 2024 – 21 December 2024

This exhibition is the outcome of the 2024 Concept to Exhibition workshop series conducted by Photo Access. After nine months of mentorship the participants have created new bodies of work showcasing their unique photographic styles.

James Bolto’s series of artworks explores wildlife – in particular the resilience of wildlife in the context of our expanding urban areas. Creatures have to adapt to live with us – or relocate to other habitats. The artist tells us that, in order to co-exist with us, wildlife species each have to find ways of living alongside us if they are to survive. His images provide information about various creatures which invite us to think about our co-existence with various species. This series effectively poses the question “to what extent should their challenges matter to us.” 

James Bolto - Black Mountain Colony, 2024

James Bolto, 2024 (Installation Image)

Kate Leddick’s series The Messy Journey of Motherhood, 2024 reflects on various aspects of family life, including love, parenthood, separation and chaos. The images have come from diving into her archives. The resultant series is, for her, a personal one about memories of what she considers to be a messy motherhood journey. The exhibition catalogue provides further details of how her feelings emerged as she undertook her exploration of her archives. 

In another series Silent Currents, 2024 Fernanda Pedroso has explored “the quiet sadness” of Tokyo – a city of silent currents, spaces between and spaces within: a city of crowds, of pulsing streets, and “where individuality thrives, yet human connection feels elusive.” Each of the images contributes to a most interesting overall snapshot of the busy city and reveals elements of the city that this artist has identified. This series is an excellent example of how photographers can explore specific urban areas and paint descriptions for those fortunate to see their imagery.

Fernanda Pedroso - from the series Silent Currents, 2024 

Fernanda Pedroso - from the series Silent Currents, 2024

Albert Soesastro has long been passionate about both photography and skateboarding. It makes sense therefore that he has merged those two passions and created photographs about skateboarding. These images immediately attracted my attention as I entered the gallery. They are vibrantly colourful and, together with their titles, reveal much about skateboarding to those of us who don’t have the knowledge.

Albert Soeastro - Argenis Urbina, Backside five-o-grind, Hume, 2023

Albert Soesastro - Annie Walker, Nose slide series, Canberra City, 2022

James Whitehead’s series reality : dreaming, circa 1987 – 2024 is about wondering what “the other side” was like, which side he was on, images recalling memories, everyday light, and new life taking shape. There are two distinct styles of images alternating on the walls of the gallery. Small colour prints arranged in groups are, presumably, memories. His other exhibits immediately say “artwork”. 

JAMES WHITEHEAD - from the series reality : dreaming, circa 1987 – 2024 

JAMES WHITEHEAD - from the series reality : dreaming, circa 1987 – 2024

Overall, the exhibition is well worth a visit. It is a credit to the five participants in the workshop, and to their mentoring by Alex Robinson. Once again, this annual program has delivered a worthwhile outcome.

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.

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.

Candle. Collapsar

Exhibition Review: Photography | Brian Rope

Candle. Collapsar | Ioulia Panoutsopoulos

ANCA Gallery, Dickson | 9 - 27 Oct 2024

Candle. Collapsar is a series of nine new works made in the studio and on analogue film by Adelaide-born and Sydney-based artist Ioulia Panoutsopoulos, who has a Bachelor of Fine Arts, First Class Honours from the College of Fine Arts, UNSW. A recipient of the John and Margaret Baker Memorial Fellowship, she has been selected as a finalist for the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award, the National Photography Prize, MAMA and Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award.

The room sheet for this exhibition starts by informing us that the works are by a contemporary artist. That is most definitely correct - the works clearly and absolutely fit into the Contemporary mould. The sheet goes on to reveal that this artist weaves together photographic, drawing and sculptural practices to embrace both the analogue and the digital realms. The artist herself tells us that, in these new works, she is pursuing synoptic connection and ambiguous movement between those realms. Why? She informs us that she is looking for an original language that pushes at the edges of photographic possibility.

I am always delighted when artists seek to push the boundaries of what is possible, whether with photography or any other art medium. That is how they (and we) grow and develop our artistic talents – or our understanding of art. To create these pieces, negatives were scanned and shown on a computer monitor, then an analogue camera was used to construct the finished product by photographing what the monitor displayed. Hotspots, screen flare, and the subtle banding pattern on the screen were embraced. Grain and the random optical texture of photographic film was overwritten, transmuted with its digital counterpart. Panoutsopoulos suggests the resulting works resemble an “open expanded pictorial nervous system.” Think about that next time you use your optical nerve to carry visual information from your eyes to your brain whilst creating a photographic artwork.

In the past, one of the main areas of focus for cognitive science was the pictorial theory of mental imagery. Proponents contended that our mechanisms which respond to perceptual inputs also reinterpret images. According to their theory, an observer not only creates an image of what someone else sees, but the perceptual system also uses the image in a bottom-up fashion. Others contend that a pictorial theory of visual perspective-taking must, at the very least, accurately depict the relative distance between various points of a scene as it would be viewed from an alternate position.

Little wonder that many of us find it difficult to define what we are looking at in images such as those in this exhibition. Are they objects, light drawings, simply marks, altered reality shapes? In my view, it simply doesn’t matter what we see, or think we do. For me, each of the artworks here are Contemporary (and I use the uppercase C deliberately) and fascinating. We can look at them for extended periods of time, finding new things of interest and continuing to imagine possibilities.

Installation image © Hilary Wardhaugh

The titles of the nine works being exhibited all share the words “Packed Matter.” That, in itself, raises questions about the images. Matter is made up of very tiny particles which are so small that we cannot see them with our naked eyes. But I am not a scientist so I’ll just leave that there and allow you to think about the titles, and the things you can see in the images, for yourself. You also should obtain and read Michael Moran’s informative catalogue essay Collapsars.

 

Packed Matter IX, 2022 © Ioulia Panoutsopoulos, Gelatin silver hand printed photograph, 83 x 124.7cm

 

Packed Matter VI, 2022 © Ioulia Panoutsopoulos, Gelatin silver photograph, 107 x 83cm

Packed Matter IV, 2019-2022 © Ioulia Panoutsopoulos

If you are nearby and able to visit the gallery at 2pm on 27 October 2024, in addition to viewing the high-quality works in their beautiful custom steel frames (and possibly purchasing one) you can listen to an in-conversation event between the artist and David Greenhalgh, National Gallery of Australia Curator (International painting and sculpture.)

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.

William Yang's Mardi Gras

Exhibition Review: Photography | Brian Rope

William Yang's Mardi Gras | William Yang

National Library of Australia (NLA) Treasures Gallery | 6 December 2023 – 1 December 2024

One of my prized possessions is a copy of Yang's book China, inscribed simply by his own hand “To Brian, Best Wishes, William Yang, Port Macquarie, 2011”. I had just heard and seen one of his presentations during the Australian Photographic Society’s annual convention in that coastal centre.

Yang is a well-known and renowned Australian performer, filmmaker, artist, and photographer. He began his career shooting fashion, but soon shifted to social documentary. Gay liberation, illegal Sydney warehouse parties, and AIDS-related deaths were all documented by this photographer.

Born in Mareeba, North Queensland, in 1943, Yang was raised in the little village of Dimbulah in the Atherton Tablelands. He got his first camera when he was seventeen but didn't start taking photography seriously until he was a university student. He relocated to Sydney in 1969 with the intention of becoming a playwright, but instead found employment as a freelance photographer covering social events. When his 1977 solo exhibition Sydneyphiles opened at the Australian Centre for Photography, his images received critical acclaim.

That exhibition gave viewers an almost voyeuristic glimpse into the social circles and private lives of people who were rarely seen by the general public, including socialites, fashion designers, actors, directors, artists, and Sydney's gay community. The community at that time was controversial as homosexual behaviour was prohibited. In Australia, pictures of gay life, love, and sex had never been shown so widely. Those who were gay and had their photos taken by the artist ran the risk of losing their jobs or facing rejection from their families.

In 1978, a newly formed Gay Solidarity Group held a protest demonstration followed by a parade celebrating queer pride: the Mardi Gras. Due to illness, Yang missed the first three annual parades whilst convalescing in Queensland. Returning to Sydney in time for the 1981 parade, Yang became a pre-eminent chronicler of Mardi Gras.

More than 250 of Yang’s photographs are held by the NLA. Among them are series relating to artists, writers, actors, celebrities, friends, Chinese Australians, intimate dinners, boisterous parties, and the Mardi Gras. This NLA Collections-in-Focus exhibition, William Yang’s Mardi Gras, displays material from over 20 years of photography documenting the parades. Originally opened late in 2023, the exhibition had to close whilst the venue was being renovated but has now resumed.

The 24 images displayed (all with Yang's trademark handwritten descriptions on them) explore four themes: Protest, Community, Art and Remembrance. What began as a protest event celebrating queer life, also became a community event; an artistic event; an event to remember people of the community lost to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

An image of a fairy makes a statement about the courage of revealing oneself as a gay/queer at that time.

Fairy, Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras, 1982. William Yang (National Library of Australia-nla.obj-136859502)

An image of two people lighting a candle effectively and sensitively remembers those who died from AIDS.

“The Last Candle.” AIDS Vigil 1994. 2/10. William Yang (National Library of Australia-nla.obj-136864462)

Morals crusader, Fred Nile, was made fun of in the 1989 parade when a Papier Mâché version of his head on a platter made an appearance. Yang was there to get an image.

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and the Head of Fred Nile
1989 Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras. William Yang
(National Library of Australia-nla.obj-136862227)

Yang was also there in 2009 to capture a simple, but effective, image of a protestor urging people to fight AIDS rather than Iraq where Australia had been involved in armed conflict from 2003.

“Protest.” NSW Mardi Gras. 2009 1/10. William Yang (National Library of Australia-nla.obj-136861261)

After years of documenting the parades, Yang wrote in his monologue Friends of Dorothy I’ve finally figured out what Mardi Gras is. It’s the re-enactment of a ritual. A ritual we have worked out over the years as defining and celebrating a gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex culture.

In a review of Yang’s Sydneyphiles Reimagined, at the State Library of New South Wales, Edward Scheer wrote Yang’s photographs …… offer the complete opposite of the selfie. ….. he offers carefully framed and curated portraits. ……. He brings the pictures back into the present moment.

This exhibition reminds us of the importance of Collections held by the NLA and other institutions. The opportunities to see exhibitions of selections from such Collections should be taken by us all if we possibly can do so.

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

Canberra Contemporary Photographic Prize 2024

Exhibition Review: Photography | Brian Rope

Canberra Contemporary Photographic Prize 2024 | Various Artists

Photo Access, Canberra | 13 - 29 June 2024 

The 2024 Canberra Contemporary Photographic Prize is a competition and exhibition open to all photo-artists worldwide, aiming to highlight fresh viewpoints in Contemporary photography. 

The inaugural 2023 Prize exhibited all 72 submitted works, some of which I believed were not Contemporary works. This year, 198 entries were received from local and distant places, including the USA. There are fifty finalists, roughly half being women and half being men. The overall quality of the Contemporary works selected is excellent. The three judges - Sandy Barnard - The Master, Sandy Prints, Oscar Capezio - Curator, ANU Drill Hall and Janice Falsone - Director, CCAS - must have had a most difficult task choosing them. The prize-winners they selected would not, of course, be everyone’s choices, but both are certainly Contemporary and deserving of recognition.

Melbourne-based Lisa Jayne Cramer took second prize with an inkjet print She carries his grief (self-portrait), 2024.  The artist statement accompanying the work says it all - From my series, ‘YOUR child, MY child, EVERYONE'S Child’, to express how grief makes demands on us, that she carries his grief. A very silent, personal journey into grief for a child that never happened, proposing dense ideas about a reformulated family structure.

She carries his grief (self-portrait), 2024 © Lisa Jayne Cramer

More of Cramer’s work can be seen at https://www.lisajaynecramer.com/ and @lisajaynecramer.

Now Sydney-based, Caleb Arcifa whose work has been seen previously in View 2024, Photo Access’s annual showcase of emerging photo-media artists from the ACT and surrounding regions, took out the first prize with a giclee enlargement from a silver gelatin original. It has the intriguing title Sonant Autograph of Joini (If I Ain’t Got You), 2023. Some of you will be familiar with the Alicia Keys track If I Ain’t Got You with its deep meaning lyrics and draw parallels.

The artist statement accompanying the work reveals that sound has been used to augment the photographic process, the print being 'signed' by the sitter’s unique sonic identity. It suggests that the portrait captures more than a visual likeness, questioning the notion of self in this Artificial Intelligence age. It describes the portrait as ephemeral, which means lasting a very short time. Let’s hope it doesn’t disappear before the exhibition closes!

I couldn’t find much about Arcifa on the web, but he is on Instagram as @thecontainerlab where I learned he is designing and fabricating a collaborative photo/design studio, darkroom/print lab and workshop in multiple freight containers.

Sonant Autograph of Joini (If I Ain’t Got You), 2023 © Caleb Arcifa

I only have space to mention two other finalists. Sydney resident Orlando Luminere has a passion for helping others develop their photography, including by setting up a photography department in a training college. His entry is a fine example of photography using a camera obscura he constructed from urban waste materials. I’ve known this artist and his artwork for a very long time and own a copy of his book about iPhone photography. I’ve participated in an online workshop watching him construct a camera obscura. One day I must have a crack at making one myself.

Souvenirs, 2024 © Orlando Luminere

The current arts practice project of Canberra’s Hilary Wardhaugh includes works created in response to feeling absolutely helpless and powerless to change the inhumane narrative of the International Criminal Court’s ‘plausible genocide’ in Gaza. She hopes her artworks resonate with others, creating a sense of shared understanding. A Meditation of Death, 2024, is part of that project - a solemn tribute to 24,000 lives lost in Gaza by 3 January 2024. Each of twelve lumen prints has approximately 2000 dots capturing the essence of those who died, inviting viewers to reflect on the profound impact of violence and loss. The major process involved in creating all those dots is detailed on Wardhaugh’s website here. If you purchase a copy from the artist, she will donate a significant amount to UNHCR in your name.

A Meditation of Death, 2024 © Hilary Wardhaugh

Congratulations to Photo Access and all the finalists.

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

Eclectic

Exhibition Review: Photography | Brian Rope

Eclectic | gm frew

The Link, 1 McClymont Way, Strathnairn | 28 May - 7 July 2024 

In this exhibition, we are asked to explore gm frew's photographic art as we go from the drama and whimsy of nature to the confusing and comedic aspects of modern life, as well as taking in the great expanse of panoramas. frew has always had a fascination for the arts, which include rock and roll, experimental music, theatre, and performing arts as well as photography.

This provocative and sometimes humorous show brings together all these different influences. It certainly is an eclectic collection of disparate digital images which showcase the photographer’s breadth of talent There are simple, straightforward photos of birds. There also are other images of birds with lightly amusing words added to them, such as “Maybe if I pretend I’m sleeping he won’t poop on my head.” That, the artist suggests, is what one bird on a lower branch directly below another on a higher branch is thinking.

And check out Dick, Duck.

Dick, Duck © gm frew

There are some classic Canberra shots, including one of the National Arboretum. Balloons – Heading South is an excellent image of hot air balloons over Lake Burley Griffin. Yes, it is like many other such shots Canberrans have all seen before posted on social media or published in the local print media. But, nevertheless, it is a fine example of such imagery.

Balloons – Heading South © gm frew

Then there are a number of very different pieces. They are not straightforward. Nor are they simple. Rather they are adventurous. They most effectively utilise the author’s imagination and certainly display his artistic skills. There is a piece titled Erehwon. Is it, I wondered, a satire like the novel Erewhon by English writer Samuel Butler, first published anonymously in 1872, set in a fictional country discovered and explored by the protagonist? Butler uses anagrams as a technique of satirizing contemporary society through inversion of conventions.

Frew confirmed for me that his artwork is named after Butler’s – albeit with a slightly different spelling. But none of that really matters. For me it is a fine work – with nicely balanced red elements including a shapely light post, flying umbrellas and a vase with tulips against a rich blue-sky background, plus a man standing at the very edge on the end of a platform suspended in the sky. We can each interpret the image in our own way.

Erehwon © gm frew

The standout work is titled “When the buddhas heard the sound of one hand clapping.” Richard Flanagan’s sweeping novel of the same title is about the barbarism of an old world left behind, about the harshness of a new country, and the destiny of those in a land beyond hope who seek to redeem themselves through love.

But there is another story that seems more relevant to this image. It is a Zen story in which 12 years old Toyo seeks personal guidance from the Master of a temple. He is asked to show the Master the sound of one hand clapping. After more than ten attempts and one year, the youngster entered true meditation and transcended all sounds. “I could collect no more,” he explained later, “so I reached the soundless sound.” Toyo had realized the sound of one hand.

This beautifully colourful image includes a Buddha and numerous other elements. It is a joy to look at and would reveal new things on every viewing.

When the buddhas heard the sound of one hand clapping © gmfrew

This exhibition is certainly worth visiting. And whilst you are at The Link you could explore the shop, Café Stepping Stone and current art exhibitions at the adjacent Strathnairn Arts and, maybe, take a walk on part of the Ginninderry Conservation Trust’s new Corridor Walking Track Network.

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