Family Album: A Re-imagining Memory - Lê Nguyên Phương, Adrian J. Song and Laura Chen
Hillvale Gallery
8th November - 1st December 2024

What is family? In what ways can we remember and understand it? What of family is preserved over time amidst the blurred apparitions of our memories? How do family images shape both personal and collective memory, and how do they construct a sense of identity?

Drawing on senses of authenticity, on everyday life, and our relationship with the past, the "family album" provides a sense of personal identity and a connection to one's own history. This exhibition combines unique works by three contemporary artists of Southeast and East Asian backgrounds and invites reflection on the family album as a repository of memories that allow individuals to construct narratives about their past, familial relationships and their position within a broader historical and cultural context. Through artistic techniques such as cutting, folding, collage, and juxtaposition, and through the media of photos, video, and installation, family albums are represented as "Les Lieux de Mémoire" (sites of memory) — spaces where narratives and memories are constructed and reconstructed. At the same time, these albums become a field where past stories are re-imagined.

Technically, this exhibition aims to transcend the boundaries of pure image interpretation within the realm of contemporary artistic photography. Methodologically, it explores the powerful role and impact of photography within historical and anthropological narratives.

Hicks | Gebhardt | Hawkes
Museum of Australia Photography
23rd November 2024 – 16th February 2025

Join us to celebrate the launch of our summer exhibitions at the Museum of Australian Photography: Amos Gebhardt’s Mångata is a poetic series that weaves sound, moving image and photography, with portraits lit entirely by moonlight; 500 Strong is the culmination of an epic project between celebrated Melbourne artist Ponch Hawkes and curator Jane Scott to photograph 500 Victorian women over the age of 50; Snakes and Mirrors shows recent works by Petrina Hicks that contemplate the self-awareness of animals, and our desire to understand the phenomenology of animal life from a human perspective. Hear from the artists and enjoy these three distinct and equally powerful exhibitions.

P.NORTH - Kathryn McCool
Centre for Contemporary Photography (Project Space Collingwood)
October 25th – 14th December 2024

Made in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as Kathryn McCool neared the end of her teenage years, this exquisite series of photographs of people and places, was captured on black-and-white film with a Rolleiflex camera. 

With little photographic experience, McCool set out to photograph her community, friends and family. The result is a set of unguarded, simple and eerie images. With the passing of time ‘P.North’ has become an engaging, poignant and sometimes humorous document of a photographer at the very start of her journey.

2024 Bowness Photography Prize
MaPH
7th September – 10th November 2024

The judging panel considered close to 750 entries, selecting 74 to comprise the final field. Artist and academic Dr Peta Clancy, former Director of Photographers’ Gallery London Brett Rogers, and MAPh Director Anouska Phizacklea worked through the submissions to select a diverse representation of contemporary Australian photography in this year’s Bowness Photography Prize.

With large-scale installations through to meticulous daguerreotypes, the shortlisted works canvass sculptural, digital and analogue photography. The pool of finalists demonstrates the expansive and captivating range of creative photographic work being made in Australia today.

The winner of the prize will win $30,000 and their work will be acquired into MAPh’s collection; the judges will also select three Honourable Mentions, thanks to Colour Factory. The artist selected for the Wai Tang Commissioning Award will receive $10,000 and the opportunity to exhibit a body of work throughout next year’s Bowness Photography Prize season. The Camera House People’s Choice winner will be awarded a prize pool worth $5000: voting will commence from the exhibition’s opening night.

Through the Looking Glassoes - Danielle Edwards
Gold Street Studios
23rd October 2024 - 26th January 2025

Offical opening 10th November 2024 2pm to 4.30 pm Opening Speech by David Tatnall at 2.30pm

Peering through the looking glass offers surprise and intrigue. When we look at things differently, we often see what was right in front of us in a new and exciting way. 

Inspired by nature, invisible radiation and visible light underpin this collection of handcrafted silver gelatin images.

Melbourne Out Loud: Life through the lens of Rennie Ellis
State Library of Victoria
1st March 2024 – 28th January 2025

If there was ever a photographer to take Melbourne’s portrait, it was Rennie Ellis.

Rennie had an uncanny ability to slip into all kinds of social circles and his photographs are the ultimate story of life on the town.​

He roamed our places: St Kilda Beach, the MCG, Swanston Street, Sidney Myer Music Bowl. He met superstars: Tina Turner, Mick Jagger, Grace Jones. He stood with crowds on the biggest days of the year: Melbourne Cup, the AFL Grand Final, the Boxing Day Test. He befriended people from all walks of life: athletes and celebrities, punks and protesters, beach goers and party lovers. And he captured it all on camera.

Part of the Photo 2024 International Festival of Photography, Melbourne Out Loud is a collection of iconic, unseen and everyday photographs from one of our greatest chroniclers. A celebration of going out, being seen and being yourself.

Carol Jerrems: Portraits
National Portrait Gallery
30th November 2024 - 2nd March 2025

Carol Jerrems: Portraits is a major exhibition of one of Australia’s most influential photographers. Jerrems’ intimate portraits of friends, lovers and artistic peers transcend the purely personal and have come to shape Australian visual culture. Set against the backdrop of social change in the 1970s, her practice charted the women’s movement, documented First Nations activism, put a spotlight on youth subcultures and explored the music and arts scenes of the era.

In a career that spanned only 12 years before her tragic death at the age of 30, Jerrems captured the world around her with curiosity and courage. She was a voracious observer yet also intentional in her approach to narrative and composition. Her photographs play with tension and dramatic impact. They are candid but at times consciously performative; vulnerable but also tough; melancholic yet joyful.

Drawn from the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, the National Library of Australia and the National Portrait Gallery, the exhibition showcases more than 140 photographs, from Jerrems’ lesser-known early work to the now iconic Vale Street 1975, and coincides with the 50th anniversary of her landmark publication A book about Australian women. Featuring portraits of cultural figures like Anne Summers, Bobbi Sykes, Evonne Goolagong and Linda Jackson the exhibition examines how her work defined a decade and continues to shape how we think about photography today.

On show exclusively at the National Portrait Gallery until 2 March.

if only we could take the time: contemporary Australian photography
National Portrait Gallery
30th November 2024 - 1st June 2025

‘There is so much beauty around us if only we could take the time to open our eyes and perceive it. And then share it.’ Photographer Carol Jerrems made this tender observation in the preface to her landmark 1974 publication, A book about Australian women, produced in collaboration with writer Virginia Fraser.

Taking its title from this text, if only we could take the time: contemporary Australian photography considers how this impulse to observe, to record and to share continues to propel photographic practice in Australia today. This show, staged alongside the major exhibition Carol Jerrems: Portraits, spotlights the work of three contemporary Australian artists whose work sits in dialogue with Jerrems’ legacy.

Ying Ang, Katrin Koenning and Anu Kumar are photographers who capture and distil quiet moments. Like Jerrems, they chronicle intimate relationships and use the camera to mediate closely felt and emotionally vivid experiences. The gestures that breathe life into a family home, the swampy dislocation of early motherhood, the interlocked networks of friends and family. In these works, tenderness, care and connection are foregrounded and the idea of portraiture is expanded.

Photo: Katrin Koenning

William Yang's Mardi Gras
National Library of Australia
26th June – 1st December 24

There was abstraction, colour and movement, and a certain innocent joie de vivre.’ – William Yang  

William Yang is an iconic and celebrated Australian photographer, performer, artist and filmmaker. Starting his career in fashion photography, he quickly turned to social documentary photography.   

This collection-in-focus display highlights William Yang’s photography of Sydney Mardi Gras festivals between 1981 and 2003. The 24 images on display explore four themes: Protest, Community, Art and Remembrance.   

This display can be seen in our Treasures Gallery until 1 December 2024. Entry to the Gallery is free and no bookings are required. 

Unseen - Graham Burstow
The Maude Street Photo Gallery
October 27th – November 24th 2024

An exhibition curated by Mikaela Burstow

Throughout his career Graham made images across multiple genres, including portraiture and landscape. But as Mikaela spent time looking through Graham’s archive of negatives, it was his social documentary images that she constantly returned to, especially as there were so many compelling photographs that had never been printed.

Although Graham enjoyed the challenge of street photography, what he really loved were the small scale outdoor events that flourished in south-east Queensland: beach girl contests, tug-o-war competitions, swap meets and shows featuring dogs, horses and even camels. The photographs in this exhibition were mostly taken in the 1970s and 80s, a period when these events flourished. For a photographer looking for spontaneous social life on public display, they were heaven.

Graham’s talent for social documentary resulted in his being commissioned by the Queensland Art Gallery (now QAGOMA) for their Journeys North project, and his love of depicting people at play was also expressed through his exhibitions, and related book, of Gold Coast images.

This exhibition reaffirms Graham Burstow’s reputation as a significant Australian social documentary photographer.

How do you stage an exhibition from a career spanning 70 years of film photography? This was the dilemma facing Mikaela Burstow, the granddaughter of Toowoomba-based photographer Graham Burstow (1927–2022), in curating this show.

About the curator:

Graham Burstow’s granddaughter, Mikaela Burstow, is a filmmaker and a photographer with an international portfolio, currently living in Israel Palestine.

The projects Mikaela works on are multi-faceted – involving exhibitions, films and printed material. Her clients are international and include: architects, designers, curators, historians & magazines.

New Light: Photography Now + Then
August 17th 2024 – July 13th 2025

With the power to freeze and preserve time, photography has captured imaginations for centuries. This August, step into New Light: Photography Now + Then, an exhibition where past and present converge in a mesmerising display of photography spanning 1890 to 2024.

Immerse yourself in the remarkable tale of amateur Brisbane photographer Alfred Henrie Elliott (1870-1954), whose extraordinary images lay dormant for decades until they were discovered in 1983, stored in cedar cigar boxes beneath a home in Red Hill.