Photography / Navigating Histories by Phuong Le and Chris Siu. At the Huw Davies Galleries, PhotoAccess until June 1. Reviewed by CON BOEKEL.

Le’s exhibition shifts between images of Vietnam and images of Sunshine, a suburb of Melbourne.

It also shifts readily between generations.

The word “Giap” recalls the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and the expulsion of the French colonial power. The image of burning US dollars recalls the American War in which Australia was an active participant.

The image of the model of a schooner recalls the great wave of Vietnamese boat people who fled the Communist victory.

There is an image of an official cablegram from an Australian bureaucrat which makes arrangements for addressing one of the consequences of our involvement: a planeload of Vietnamese war orphans being flown to Australia. A then-contemporary newspaper photograph of a row of orphans in boxes joins the human dots. A photo of a man, perhaps an orphan who has now grown up, is juxtaposed.

The quality of the photography seems to me at times to be almost dismissive. The use of flash sometimes results in blowouts. Saturation levels vary considerably. The inkjet prints are at times basic. The particular documentary approach suggests street photography on the run.

Visually there are various cues that set elements of the exhibition beyond Australian norms. Some of the words use Vietnamese script. The hues do not seem to quite fit. The images include a statue of Buddha, a woman wearing an ao dai, a traditional wood carving, and an image of a junk at sea in what I take to be Ha Long Bay.

Le documents the Vietnamese community’s life in Sunshine, Victoria. He simultaneously lauds the vibrancy of the community while describing it as expressing a faux cultural representation of its homeland.

He regards Vietnam as both home and as unattainable. The bitterness is almost palpable. The image of the Giap text and the image of blowflies on a dead duck sit side by side.

Le documents being a second-generation migrant: the feeling of being a double outsider, the inter-generational cultural conflicts, and the profound sense of loss.

The exhibition is also about how Vietnamese refugees as a group have landed. Le adopts the indigenous historical experience as an analytic frame. I am not sure that any or all indigenous people would accept this. While there may be some important parallels, Vietnamese refugees in Australia have one thing in common with everyone else who has arrived since 1788.

Le harnesses a highly personal photographic style to express raw emotional power as well as unresolved conflicts.

Chris Siu’s four large sumptuous black and white prints traverse something of the same journey. The juxtaposition of the expired passport and a newspaper account of the hand back of Hong Kong by Britain to China is acutely handled.

Siu’s works are superbly printed. They are highly-textured, redolent with gravitas and deeply considered. Just wonderful.

A third of Australians were born overseas; half have one or both parents born overseas. The two exhibitions express at a personal level some of the multifarious losses felt across our nation. However, they do not explicitly address any gains.
Perhaps they should?

The “Lucky Country” may originally have been intended to be an ironic term but in some important respects we do make our own luck. Le’s exhibition reflects a freedom of expression unavailable to either Le or Siu in their respective homelands.

‘