3 Exhibitions @ ACP

Overview

Entering the Australian Centre for Photography brings you face-to-face with a wall of photographs: Lee Grant’s Belco Pride exhibit set in Belconnen, a suburb on the outskirts of Canberra where Grant grew up. The direct, square-cut prints hold an echo of polaroid snaps taken on a Sunday afternoon, with a darker undertone. A mixture of revealing portraits and urban scenes, the exhibit is an honest, sometimes affectionate essay about place, landscape, pride and suburban Australia.

The main show is Melbourne photographer Conor O’Brien’s first major survey exhibition. O’Brien’s aesthetic is intentionally muted and voyeuristic — the experience is like walking through the pages of a stranger’s family album. Meaning is obscured, stories are hidden. What I find most notable are the many photographs of women whose faces are obscured or have their backs are to the camera. In the only photo where a face can be seen, the subject has her eyes shuttered closed. These photos are strangely haunting; is the artist depicting his privilege? Can only he know the secrets of these women hidden from the camera? Why aren’t these women turned outwards? Why are they not a part of the conversation between the photographer and us, the voyeuristic viewer?

Around the corner is Rebecca Dagnall’s wonderfully immersive There is unrest in the forest, there is trouble in the trees. Evoking an elemental Australian gothic, Dagnall’s huge photographs are thickly atmospheric creations of trees in a local park set amongst pooling darkness. By mirroring the images, or creating mirroring within the images, Dagnall produces a mystical set of creatures within the forest. Eyes stare. Spiders manifest. There are tigers, bats, horned goats. My companion declares, with a delicious twinkle in his eye, that he fully intends to return with a mate later in the week when they’ve both had a “puff of the trumpet”.

Image: Rebecca Dagnall, There is unrest in the forest, there is trouble in the trees, 2011