Photo Media Exhibition Review | Brian
Rope
The
Bees and the Ledger | Kai Wasikowski
An
Satong Kawaran | George Calvelo
Photo
Access | 15 May – 14 June 2025
Bees
in the Ledger
is described as being a kind of slow family work. Whilst you may well know
little about the artist’s grandmother, Natalia Broadhurst, who is the central
figure in the story presented here, you very likely know a lot about other
members of his family. I’ll just mention that both his parents are excellent
photo media artists, and his actress sister has been known to use her camera on
a film set between takes.
So
where does the exhibition’s title come from? The exhibition catalogue tells us
that bees remember and that a ledger works in much the same way, structuring
things so we can return to names, to dates, to whatever else we’ve recorded in them.
The artist suggests that a ledger is a hive of sorts, with each entry being
akin to a cell in a beehive, storing things which might otherwise not stay
within our memories. And of course it is absolutely true that photography creates
contents for a ledger – a place where we store images which remind us of what
we saw, of things that we were doing, or places we had visited.
In
this exhibition, Kai Wasikowski share parts of his grandmothers somewhat
abandoned European life, abandoned when she migrated – arriving in Australia on
a cargo ship in the 1970s. There are two large walls of photographs – one of domestic
scenes, the other a variety. On one wall the images are displayed in a grid, on
the other as a sequence. Careful examination allows us to take in what is being
shared.
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| Kai Wasikowski, from the series ‘The Bees and the Ledger,’ 2024 |
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| Kai Wasikowski, from the series ‘The Bees and the Ledger,’ 2024 |
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| Kai Wasikowski, from the series ‘The Bees and the Ledger,’ 2024 |
The
second exhibition here is by George Calvelo, previously a photojournalist in
the Philippines and currently a documentary photographer based in Canberra. His
artist bio tells us his personal work now “reflects years of unprocessed
thoughts stemming from witnessing systemic disinformation and simmering
societal disorder in his native country.”
The
title of this exhibition An Satong Kawaran translates to “In Our Absence.”
As with the companion exhibition, this show is about a life left behind in
another country and a new life emerging in Australia.
Before
leaving his home country Calvelo exposed several rolls of film. His intention
was to re-expose them after he arrived in Australia. However, using the slow
deliberate process of analogue photography, he did something different from
photojournalism. He photographed his memories, familiar places, his childhood
home, and final moments in places where he’d said his personal goodbyes. Later,
looking at overlapping images on his developed films he found it hard to cut
the frames. Why? Because he felt that he was looking at a dream like state of
transition, where his sense of home was evolving because of the new place that
he was now living.
So
what we see in this exhibition are images where photographs captured in his new
home have been overlapped with photographs from his old home. The result is
some most extraordinary creations. Two of the archival inkjet prints are very
large – one is 100 by 340 cm, another 130 by 324 cm. The quality of these
prints is superb.
 |
| George Calvelo, from the series ‘An Satong Kawaran,’ 2023/2024 |
In
addition to the prints, the exhibition includes two other pieces. Overlaid
negative strips on a light box enable us to think about his “dream-like state”.
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| Installation image © Eunie Kim |
And
there is a 06:17 length video which is a compilation of Calvelo’s visual diary
and past assignments. This beautifully shows us something of where this artist
has been, what he’s heard, what he saw, and how he moved through the moments
displayed. There are dreamlike pieces, photojournalistic images of events
during periods of martial law, glorious portrayals of the Philippines
countryside, and much more.
This review is also available on the author’s own blog here.
