Photography / “The Pandy Shuffle”, a photographic exhibition at the Huw Davies Gallery, PhotoAccess, until December 22. Reviewed by CON BOEKEL

THE consistent element of the 58 prints in “Pandy Shuffle” is that the artists involved are creative, thoughtful and insightful. The exhibition vibe ranges from jaunty humour through noir realism to a brush with the surreal. 

The artists are Andrea Bryant, Erin Burrows, Phil Carter, Briony Donald, Thomas Edmondson, Sara Edson, Caroline Lemerle, Kathy Leo, Claire Manning, Tom Varendoff, and Grant Winkler.

Phil Carter’s image “Somewhere Near Here” has an “On the Beach” end of the world feel. At first this photo seems to be ordinary. Not so. The colours are muted. The dynamic range is limited. The light is dull. Suburbia looks emptied of humans but not abandoned. The road goes nowhere. The bollards control no traffic. The wheelie bins wait for their release. The image feels silent: shutdown zeitgeist?

By way of contrast, Carolyn Lemerle does street photography in Newtown. Overtly political in intent, Lemerle is focused on the tensions between middle-class wealth and poverty-stricken, marginalised people. Saturated colours, stacked bunches of flowers and business shop fronts suggest energy. However, the built environment is tatty and the urban structures are often photographed out of true. The mute street dwellers are often wary, watchful. Lemerle has a good eye for detail – such as the top of an uncapped grog bottle peeping out of a brown paper bag.

Claire Manning’s “Time is Precious, Still Life” repays intent observation. It is complex. It has powerful narrative elements but we are left hanging. The depth planes are out of kilter. The rectilinear shapes are not square. One of the whites is blown. The blacks are very black, creating indecipherable spaces. The sky is a blown blue. What did happen between 10.36pm and 10.41am? Or is that 10.41pm? I wonder whether the metadata shows whether either time is coterminous with when the image was captured. This is a wonderful contemplation of time and space.

Tom Varendoff’s ‘Untitled” has a spare sense of formalism to it. There is an amusing tension generated by the black dog looking up to the top left while the black dog’s shadow head is within centimetres of its potential prey – a fluffy toy. By way of contrast, the generally flat planes, the muted tones and the lack of tonal variation of the larger masses in the image generate stillness. Something has to give!

Andrea Bryant’s semi-abstract imagery is of the urban detritus in Canberra’s waterways – symbolic of their degradation and of human encroachment on nature. Bryant uses the infrared spectrum to good effect. It leaves limited light tones on space-like black backgrounds. The sublimation prints on aluminium float from the walls. The exhibition spotlights, focused on the prints in a darkened room, enhance the surreal effect. In “Space Trolley” the consumerist icon lies on its side, dead in the water. It is viewed as if from space or perhaps as if in space.

Thomas Edmondson uses photo realism to capture a graffiti-splattered nightmare vision in “Kambah Drains”. Graffiti texts “Aspire” and “Grim” reflect the powerful pictorial structural elements which attempt to square the circle. The binary extends to light entering the tunnel from above compared with a black hole at the centre of the image.

Covid bedevilled the “Concept to Publication” workshops that generated the exhibition works. There were session delays and movement restrictions as well as blocked access to equipment. Led by Wouter Van de Voorde, the workshop artists formed a small community, supported and inspired each other, and then generated individual creative responses.

“The Pandy Shuffle” is like life: a box of chocolates. Do go and see this exhibition. I have briefly touched on some of the works of some of the artists. There is much, much more to appreciate. If you go, try not to kick the pigeon and see if you can spot Sara Edson’s locked-and-loaded dog.