Hijacked III

Overview

Hijacked III is the third in a series connecting photographers from Australia and overseas. This offering focuses on a link between our shores and the UK. Christian Thompson’s *Untitled #7 * shows a giant figure wrapped in soft fabric except for painted white hands. A powerful gaze projects out from under the hood of patternd fabric. The figure seems to be regarding visitors from a wiser place and offering them illumination in the cut plastic water bottle it offers to the viewer.

Sarah Pickering’s Landmine and Artillery from her Explosion series each show one instant pop of army explosives during training exercises. The images spark (one literally) with energy and the beautiful swirl of particulate matter, beautiful to watch. But these are killing machines. Tracey Moffat’s series of plantation Dyptichs show a rural Australia washed in orange as though on fire. In some, actually aflame.

For Inside the View, Helen Sear scratches away one photograph to reveal another landscape beneath. The overlaid images are each portraits of backs of heads, and inside them the scratching reveals their dreams of forests or fiery moments in the night sky. Melinda Gibson’s The Photograph as Contemporary Art follows a similar path, but with sharp cuts taking the place of Sear’s scratchings.

Seba Kurtis’ A Few Days More series explores migration in the Americas from South- to North-, but his photos of horses and urban moments are in love with the blown out lights of the american cityscape.

Maciej Dakowicz lights on the kisses, dresses and near misses of a night out on Cardiff’s St Mary St. Tony Greaves’ Radical Love series shows nuns at play and Laura Pannack has a stunning sad, alluring and intimate portrait of first love with her uncanny Graham. In this exhibition the hijacking of nationality takes second place to the actual hijacking going on: great photographers taking over ordinary moments and bringing them to shimmering life.

Image from Maciej Dakowicz's Cardiff After Dark.