Photomedia in the era of globalisation
Terence Maloon, Director of the ANU (Australian National University) Drill Hall Gallery, joked that they could have made Incommensurable: Photomedia in the era of globalisation a satellite event of the Sydney Biennale that had recently opened down the Hume Highway. What he meant was that the works in this exhibition were similarly contemporary, on the same wave length as the international art offerings of a Biennale and covering similar ground. But in this he may have sold himself short. Incommensurable was actually better imagined than many an international art show that is overdrawn on buzz words and fashion-consciousness. Incommensurable was that rare thing; an exhibition where the whole was greater than the sum of the parts.
Some of the strongest commentary about the global era is being pursued currently, beyond journalism and academic discourse, in image-based art forms. International art has the power to open up to us the contradictions and trauma of different lives lived globally in the glare of media and social media. In many ways, artists are more capable than they ever were of ‘making statements’. And yet, the financialising of international art, and the creating of art-experiences as tourism, also compromises this.
For a small gallery, Drill Hall was punching above its weight, with stirring photomedia from artists Merilyn Fairskye, Anne Zahalka, Nick Danziger, Ciara O’Brien, David Stephenson and Martin Walch. Remarkably different images, they colluded to provide reflection on the moral force of image-making in the global era and to do so by mobilising the aesthetics of photomedia. It was admirable curation.
For example, the juxtaposition of several of David Stephenson’s large-format photographs from his series Light Cities, of global cities at night, addressed