From Carrie Miller…
Hijacked III – an exhibition of Australian and UK photo-media artists at the Australian Centre For Photography – provides audiences with an opportunity to observe the ways in which contemporary photographic practices remain affected by the social, cultural and political specificity of the places from where they materialise.
Twenty-five artists are included in this slickly curated exhibition, including one of Australia’s most celebrated contemporary artists, Tracey Moffatt. Audiences will inevitably be drawn to the work of current favourite Petrina Hicks. Her hyper-real image of a girl with a hairless cat, which combines the production values of advertising with the compositional qualities of traditional portrait painting, reveals something unsettling about the tensions between beauty and vulnerability and that which is darker, almost abject in children, emphasised by the strange creature she holds.
The subject matter covers the usual conceptual suspects – suburban melancholy, indigenous culture, gender politics – and the show includes a variety of media, including archival images, documentary snap shots and Internet grabs. This is the ideal exhibition for anyone wanting to get an overview of the latest in contemporary photography and who doesn’t need to grasp the deeper meanings of the work to enjoy it.
Until August 19
Australian Centre For Photography, Paddington
Pic: Courtesy the artist & Stills Gallery, Sydney
