Reflecting the Times Through Narrative Photography

Your ability to capture and create dialogue using ephemeral moments is captivating. Tell me about your love of piecing together these photographs such as the work in your “while the mountains have feet” series.

Well, that work is me trying to bring together itinerant or migrant pieces from four different bodies of work into this dialogical space — and that particular wall is a one-off scenario. It's reflective of how I work in general. I always work across multiple stories at any point. There's fluidity in the process, and the series intersect with each other. Sometimes they might merge in and out of each other. I like to use fragmentary storying to imply multiple truths and lived experiences; to invite multiple readings of the work.

Do you think, given the different iterations in regards to how you present the work, it's read  differently, depending on presentation and location? For example, how it might be viewed at NGV and then in a different setting, or do you think it still carries the same sort of messaging?

Well, the NGV [National Gallery of Victoria] acquired all that work and as the artist, I get to specify how it’s presented in perpetuity. You know, and so it was like, okay, can it only be presented in that particular layout slash full dialogue? Or would you like for it to be open? I love the idea of it being able to be reassembled and to see what kind of conversations might emerge from that. I'm curious to see how it can be read differently according to how it's shown. A picture is a picture and it can be so powerful, but it's really in the dialogue when things start to happen. The dialogue is where you start  guiding your audience. It never ceases to amaze me how with say, thirty pictures, you can make something sad or you can make something joyous and celebratory, depending on what you choose. It's in how you bring the pictures together that you set the tone.

When it comes to sequencing a new body of work or a new iteration of work such as “while the mountains had feet” — how subconscious is the actual image-making versus the final product of how it's been presented — keeping in mind you made this work during the pandemic (if I’m not mistaken)?

Yes, it’s all made since 2020. I think it’s ultimately very intuitive. Particularly with the more diaristic works. I'm often working with a place-narrative. During the lockdown and of course circumstantially, we couldn't go anywhere, so there was this five kilometre radius. In a way that wasn't new for me because I always work in my backyard and love this idea of seeing how close I can remain for it to not fall apart. It meant thinking about the politics of the hyperlocal more so than ever and telling local stories. I’ve lived [in Prahran] for 14 or 15 years or something. I could forever just concentrate on photographing, making and finding stories from ‘my’ suburb alone. It’s a kind of mini geography. A mini-ecology in which everything is interconnected.

Although you made this work during the pandemic, it’s not about covid but it’s very  much a product of its time.

Yes, I wasn't interested in making work about Covid, but it's definitely of its time. How could it be any other way? It touches on themes like shelter, relation, repair, grief. We lost my dad's partner of 23 years. And so, you know, all these things are in there. I was very conscious of wanting the dialogue to be a little bit emotionally charged and carry some melancholy because that's truthful to how that time felt. I was also working with a group of elderly down from the social flats and then Covid smashed it all apart. Every week, we’d catch up for an hour of dancing at the bottom of the social flats and it's so sad because it got defunded after Covid. Most of them were in their seventies, even eighties and mostly women. We know that being older, you’re often cast aside; an outsider.  The media presents you like you don't have any agency. But actually, there's so much fire and life. And laughter and gossip and community. So that's how I wanted the work to feel; alive. I always prioritised the story over the ‘formula’. What  does the story want? And then, how do I have to approach it? What form or language do I have to use to do that? The last thing I would ever want to do is to paint a sad picture of these elderly women, because it's not the truth. I want it to feel lively and I want it to feel spirited. How do I do that? It has to be light, it has to have flash. Just a little bit of fill flash to make it feel a bit poppy.

I can see that, yes, and that leads me to my next question, particularly regarding Swell and Lake Mountain. How does your environmentalism play into your work? Your concern for the future of the planet, and our society at large? To me, it feels like that's at the very core of your work. How intrinsic for you is that relationship between creating art and your relationship with the living world? And more so, the urgency of that. I know we’ve discussed this before; but how can we be making work and not be thinking about this?

Yes, the positioning underlies everything; I mean, in a way it goes back to what we just talked about with work being of its time. The political, the criticality, it comes not from art, you know, not photography — it comes from being alive and being human; a thinking, living, breathing human on this planet.

Absolutely. There’s no way to separate these values and who you are.

Yes, I do believe that artists have a role. Their role is also to speak critically to the times in which  they live. And that doesn't have to mean that it's loud and shouty. It can be subtle and quiet.

Absolutely. And that Is something I believe you do really well.

So it's very intentional; the playfulness of that comes across in the images, and in the installation. I can feel the energy and I get what you're saying about how important the mood is and the feeling, from the outset, not just as a secondary thought.

Oh thank you — yes it's super important, definitely intentional. Feeling is quite foundational to everything I do.

So, from your many bodies of work, perhaps over the last five or six years, I’m thinking more of Swell and your Lake Mountain work; you’re able to pivot your focus between past, present and  future rather effortlessly; do you find it difficult to switch perspective like that, in terms of your narrative?

I think it comes naturally.