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Exhibitions that took place in advance of PHOTO 2021 are now available to view online with a combination of virtual tours, installation photos and essays.

THE IMAGE LOOKS BACK RMIT Gallery

Jacqueline Felstead (AU), Joan Fontcuberta (ES), Forensic Architecture (UK), Generative Photography (UK/CH), Mike Gray (AU), Joe Hamilton (AU), Thomas Hirschhorn (CH), Rhonda Holberton (US), Fei Jun (CN), Amalia Lindo (AU/US), Rosa Menkman (NL), Tyler Payne (AU), QueerTech.io (AU), Joachim Schmid (DE), Winnie Soon (HK)

Curated by Alison Bennett (AU), Shane Hulbert (AU), Rebecca Najdowski (US), Daniel Palmer (AU)

Leading artists, photographers and technologists explore how notions of visual truth and human experience are shaped by new technologies of vision— including algorithmic processes, machine vision and networked circulation. Online

Image: Michael Gray, Batu Karas, 2018.

NO TRUE SELF Centre for Contemporary Photography

Arvida Byström (SE), Thibaut Henz (BE), Artor Jesus Inkerö (FI), Hanna Putz (AT), Jana Schulz (DE), Andrzej Steinbach (PL), Thomas Taube (DE)

Curated by David A. Kerr (AU)

No True Self is a major exhibition of an emerging generation of critically acclaimed contemporary artists, featuring unique perspectives from Austria, Belgium, Finland, Germany, Poland and Sweden.

The artists address important and universal questions of gender, sexuality, agency and cultural identity in the extreme present, representing the generation shortly before the digital native generation at the precipice of the post-digital, and possessing a variety of unique approaches to photomedia, truth and artifice, and the presentation of the human subject. Online

Image: Hanna Putz, Untitled, from the series, Everything else is a lie, 2018–19. Courtesy the artist.

THE NEW BLACK VANGUARD: PHOTOGRAPHY BETWEEN ART AND FASHION Bunjil Place

Campbell Addy (UK/GH), Arielle Bobb-Willis (US), Micaiah Carter (US), Awol Erizku (ET/ US), Nadine Ijewere (UK/NG/JM), Quil Lemons (US), Namsa Leuba (CH/GN), Renell Medrano (US), Tyler Mitchell (US), Jamal Nxedlana (ZA), Daniel Obasi (NG), Ruth Ossai (UK/NG), Adrienne Raquel (US), Dana Scruggs (US), Stephen Tayo (NG)

Curated by Antwaun Sargent (US)

This exhibition presents new perspectives on the medium of photography and the notions of race and beauty, gender and power. From New York and Johannesburg to Lagos and London, the artists open up conversations around the roles of the black body and black lives as subject matter.

Image: Campbell Addy, Adut Akech, 2019 © the artist. Exhibition organised by Aperture, New York and made possible, in part by Airbnb.

AFFIRMATION Koorie Heritage Trust

Paola Balla (Wemba Wemba/Gunditjmara), Deanne Gilson (Wadawurrung), Tashara Roberts (Dja Dja Wurrung/Yorta Yorta), Pierra Van Sparkes (Pibbulman)

Showcasing some of Victoria’s most exciting multidisciplinary Indigenous artists, Affirmation explores the concept of truth in the context of place, ancestral identity and cultural pride.

Hidden truths and practices of Indigenous knowledge sharing create a powerful hub for artists to controvert and create further dialogue on de-colonising established structures.

In dramatically shifting the status quo, Affirmation generates new thinking and reflecting about the ’smoke and mirrors’ of truth-telling.

Image: Paola Balla, I Woke Up Like Dis, 2016. Online

Hoda Afshar (IR/AU), Peta Clancy (Bangerang, AU), Michael Cook (Bidjara, AU), Rosemary Laing (AU)

Taking its title from the apocalyptic science fiction text of the same name by JG Ballard, this exhibition interrogates urban and natural landscapes to reveal darker truths about human inhabitations.

Addressing the contemporary ramifications of past actions, the works hold confronting realities in tension with idyllic and iconic environments, challenging dominant narratives to focus attention on what has been overlooked, denied or concealed. In particular, they draw upon colonial histories, fact and fiction, to consider the landscape as an amorphous political site.

Image: Hoda Afshar, Remain (still), 2018, 2-channel digital video, colour, sound. Courtesy the artist and Milani Gallery.

YOU ARE HERE Town Hall Gallery

Duha Ali & Justine Youssef, Ophelia Bakowski (AU), Miriam Charlie (Garrawa, Yanyuwa, AU), Club Ate: Bhenji Ra (PH/AU) & Justin Shoulder (AU) with Tristan Jallah (AU), Nici Cumpston (Barkindji, AU), Tammy Law (AU), James Tylor (AU), Anne Zahalka (AU)

You Are Here explores the connection and disconnection to country. For the First Peoples of Australia and those more recently arrived, relationships with the Australian landscape are defined by both a deep sense of cultural belonging and the country’s history of conflict and displacement.

You Are Here is a meditation on ideas of Online

home and identity within the environment informed by cultural, personal and historical narratives.

Image: Anne Zahalka, You Are On Dharawal Land!, 2020. Image courtesy the artist and ARC ONE Gallery.

Destiny Deacon (Kuku/Erub/Mer, AU)

Destiny Deacon is internationally renowned for her darkly comical work that offers a nuanced, thoughtful and, at times, intensely funny snapshot of contemporary Australian life.

By contrasting seemingly innocent childhood imagery with scenes taken from the darkest reaches of adulthood, Deacon uncovers disturbing discrepancies

Image: Destiny Deacon, Smile, 2017. Courtesy the artist. between real and imagined representations of Australian Aboriginal life. DESTINY is a rare and unique insight into the life and work of one of Australia’s most daring contemporary artists.

SHE WHO HAS NO SELF Horsham Regional Art Gallery

Minstrel Kuik (MY)

Curated by Alison Eggleton (AU)

Minstrel Kuik’s art practice considers and questions the politics of place, family and cultural identity and how this intersects with personal experience.

Born in Malaysia of Chinese ancestry, she lives and works in a suburban neighbourhood on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur where negotiating the tensions of different ideologies and social bounds is an everyday occurrence.

With photography at the core of her multidisciplinary practice Kuik works across the disciplines of drawing, photo books, fabric assemblage and installation. Interested in how the act of seeing is shaped by society, Kuik explores photography’s equivocal relationship to truth to understand the self among the complexities of modern life in Malaysia. Online

Image: Minstrel Kuik, Mimic la chinoise, 2005-19. Courtesy the artist and Richard Koh Fine Art, Kuala Lumpur.

Robert Fielding (AU)

Western Arrente, Yankunytjatjara and Pitjantjatjara artist Robert Fielding’s new work is grounded in archival, institutional and community research. Led by an enquiry into cultural objects that have been collected and removed from country since the beginning of colonisation, Fielding raises questions about ownership of cultural knowledge, the institutionalisation of sacred objects, and change as an integral part of resilient cultures.

ECONOMICS OF WATER Murray Art Museum Albury

James Tylor (AU)

Economics of Water maps the damage that has occurred to the Murray Darling River system, which for over 65,000 years has sustained life in what is now Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory. Tylor has overlaid photographs with gold geometric shapes, symbolic of non-Indigenous agricultural practices, fisheries, water diversion and other aspects of settler infrastructure.

STAGECRAFT Art Gallery of Ballart

David Noonan (AU)

Stagecraft brings together silkscreen collages on fabric, tapestries and film by Ballarat-born artist David Noonan. Renowned for repurposing found photographs, Noonan uses images from his personal archive to create ambiguous works, often with a focus on a solitary haunting figure. Noonan creates new compositions using black and white images appropriated from sources including magazines relating to avant-garde theatre, film, design, architecture, dance and music.

Image: Robert Fielding, Echoes#1 (Tjalini), 2019. Courtesy the artist, Mimili Maku Arts and Blackartprojects.

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Image: James Tylor, Economics of Water #2 (Divide), 2018. Courtesy the artist.

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Image: David Noonan, Untitled, 2019. Courtesy the artist.

Jacky Redgate (AU)

Jacky Redgate is known for the systems and logic that inform her sculptural and photographic works. Hold On reflects on how she has recalled the autobiographical images and subjects of her juvenilia, while continuing to make conceptually based photographs over the past decade. Blurring the lines between truth and untruths, Redgate’s works embody a cathexis on emotionally laden subjects.

THE MUSEUM OF THERE, NOT THERE STATION

Patrick Pound (AU)

Patrick Pound is interested in representations of things you can’t really see. For this exhibition, Pound responded to the specific peculiarity of presenting an exhibition that no one could attend. While the world was locked down (and locked out of the gallery), The museum of there, not there stood alone, unvisited but not unseen. The silent and empty gallery spaces were filled with a vast scatter-piece spread across the floor and walls.

SYMBIONTS STATION

Guy Grabowski (AU)

Image consumption is a part of our modern diet. Symbionts continues Guy Grabowsky’s exploration into the ways in which images are created, reproduced, deleted, edited, copied and pasted to create a warped perception of truth and reality. Literally translated from the Greek word for ‘living together’, the term ‘symbionts’ is used by Grabowsky to describe the co-dependence of analogue and digital processes in his photographic outcomes.

Image: Jacky Redgate, Unfold – Mirrors, doll, coaster and spoon set, toy sewing machine, 2016. Courtesy the artist and ARC ONE Gallery, Melbourne.

Image: Patrick Pound, The museum of there, not there (detail), 2020. Courtesy the artist and STATION. Online

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Image: Guy Grabowsky, Disintegrated Surface, 2018. Courtesy the artist and STATION.