PHOTOGRAPHER David Flanagan’s fascination with Canberra’s ongoing northern transformation of nature into suburbia is the subject of his exhibition.

Rescuing what might otherwise be a series of dystopic visions is Flanagan’s intense focus on weather and detail. In “Untitled #9”, the early evening light rakes across the middle ground, delineating both treelined ridges on the left, earthmoving machines on the right and the far-off mountains. The deeply shadowed hills of transplanted earth in the foreground are matched by the heavy lowering sky of an approaching storm.

Anja Loughhead has been asking herself what it means to be the Australian granddaughter of Finnish migrants. In her two-minute looped video she enacts, against a large, drawn backdrop of cabins and trees, various Finnish tropes – skiing, fishing, eating sausage from a bbq fork, munching from a bag of Finnish sweets. 

The success of the work lies in the artist’s clever combination of humour and seriously naïve pathos as she attempts to crack the code of a familial heritage that is very far removed from her Australian upbringing.