Photography / Counter-sites. At PhotoAccess until April 5. Reviewed by CON BOEKEL.

This is an unusual PhotoAccess exhibition because it was chosen on the basis of a proposal by the curators, Madeleine Sherburn and Karl Halliday. They seek to trigger conversations.

The overall outcome is a tight conceptual integration. Landscapes and their interpretation are a significant leitmotiv. A basic theme is how meaning depends on the nexus between photographer, camera, place and the varying contexts within which images are exhibited.

Matt Dunne’s focus is the dog proof fence. Construction began as a colonial project before Federation. It is the world’s longest single ecological barrier. Its function is to separate sheep from dingoes. Dunne advocates for the dingo.

His main message is that when it comes to a choice between native values and profit, profit always wins out. This triggers various conversations. On the one hand our national park system is not “profitable”. Then again, the sheep industry employs around 45,000 people and is worth around $5 billion a year.

Crucially, the dingo plays a vital ecological role. By way of analogy, the reintroduction of the grey wolf to Yellowstone National Park has had a profound regenerative impact on everything ecological from the distribution of forest growth to fish size.

Dunne’s inkjet prints are documentary images. A 1080 poison warning sign marks the pointy end of Dunne’s exhibition. The prints are mounted on poles which have on them the latitude and longitude details of locations the prints were taken.

Distributing the prints from inside the exhibition space to outside the building in our urban environment reminds us that, remote as it is to Canberra, the dog proof fence affects us all.

Bella Capezio exhibits two large c-type prints. These are excellent. The first is a foreground of former alluvial gold field. It shows a steep-sided and undercut high energy erosion gully.

The soil profile shows that everything we see was disturbed by mining and is now being re-disturbed by the ongoing erosion triggered by deforestation. The surrounding trees are at very young stage of their regrowth. The old growth was cut down during the mining era. The site is a complete ecological wreck.

The second print depicts the underground shadow of the Welcome Stranger – a 72 kilogram gold nugget.

The conversation here is about the ecological destruction of mining and the colonial power imbalance which enabled the invaders to grab the gold. In a play on words the “Welcome” in the title has been crossed out. The colonials were unwelcome strangers.

On the face of it this is a straightforward critique. However, various discussions are possible. Beyond the issue of the great colonial resource grab, there is gold in our mobile phones. Is it possible to mine and include smidges of it in mobile phones without creating some level of ecological destruction? Who decides how gold is mined and distributed?

Christine McFetridge’s exhibition is an installation. The sharp end consists of Victorian colonial engineer Coode’s report on options for “managing” the Yarra’s flood peaks at Dwight’s Falls.

The Report was triggered by flooding which was then impeding the expansion of Melbourne. McFetridge engages in re-writing and corrections. The intention here is to challenge colonial assumptions and the colonial framing of issues.

Photos of the original report text, red-inked, are graphically successful. McFetridge triggers layered conversations about living in urban spaces, who makes decisions and how nature is impacted by settlement patterns.

Counter-sites is aptly named. The conversations it triggers embed a larger question: “How do we decolonise when both the colonisers and those colonised will continue to share a continent?”