Born 1989, Santa Rosa de Viterbo, Brazil
Lives and works Melbourne, Australia

Cecilia Sordi Campos is a Brazilian-born, Australian-based photographic artist, writer and researcher. Her practice is positioned in the field of socially engaged art, autofiction and expanded documentary. Campos’ work draws on her experience as a Brazilian migrant from both European and Afro-Brazilian ancestry, as well as her experiences as an infertile woman of colour. She makes work through critical engagement alongside an openness to alternative world views and underrepresented perspectives. The works exhibited are drawn from across three bodies of work: Tem Bigato Nessa Goiaba (2019), das palavras a pele (2020-ongoing), Augúrio and the smells that were not there (2021-ongoing) which explore notions of cultural identity and the self, as well as sensual knowledge and the female body through sensations of touch, scent and vision. Her practice seeks to uncover visual strategies for communicating complex experiences within a public discourse.

Born 1994, Cairns, Australia
Lives and works Cairns, Australia

Teva Cosic is an artist based between Naarm/Melbourne and Gimuy/Cairns. Her research and practise explore the complex tensions of family and cultural history as they intersect with boarder notions of identity, migration and belonging. Her series, Wander Lines (2022) was made during a six week period visiting her grandmother in Sweden for the first time in five years. Wander Lines explores the uncanny encounter of the familiar as it has been made strange through the separation of time. Cosic writes: ‘here, in the town my mother grew up and my grandmother grows old, the everyday is transmogrified through the strange parallelism of a life that has only ever partly been mine.’ The work features symbols drawn from history, tradition and mythology.

Born 1999, Naarm (Melbourne), Australia
Lives and works Naarm (Melbourne), Australia

Kyle Archie Knight is a Wiradjuri queer photographic artist. His series Cruising for a Bruising (2022-ongoing) is a camp love letter to the Australian Suburbs. Growing up queer in outer-metropolitan Naarm (Melbourne), Knight found themselves drawn to explore the streets of their family neighbourhood. Their search for moments that capture the essence of suburbia results in a celebration of the surreal and the mundane, the humorous and the humdrum. Knight reconnects with past memories of estrangement, finding humour and delight in what was once alienating and suffocating.

Born 1993, North Shore, Aotearoa
Lives and works Naarm (Melbourne) , Australia

Pearce Leal is a photographer based in Naarm. His recent work explores the profound interconnection between humans and the natural world, how we simultaneously form and are formed, by our surroundings. This is shown in the two bodies of work exhibited – Slowly Through the Grass (2021- ongoing) and Salmon at the Antipodes (working title, 2022- ongoing) – that, while created in vastly different geographical locations within Australia, share this thematic thread. One examines the introduction of Salmonoid species, raising questions about the ecological consequences of farming and restocking cycles. The other focuses on the flying fox, a crucial migratory species for pollination and seed dispersal of native flora up and down Australia’s east coast. Across his practice, Leal creates works through amalgamating photographs, archival materials, ecological writings, and tangible alterations to printed matter. His works invite reflection on how past actions have shaped the present-day landscapes we inhabit.

Born 1996, Melbourne, Australia
Lives and works Melbourne, Australia

Nicholas Mahady’s practice is concerned with depicting micro atmospheres – vague entities that are almost qualities rather than subjects. The conceptual framework around Mahady’s practice considers how to represent the unrepresentable, like atmospheres and energies, in the most realistic of mediums: photography. Mahady’s work further references the nature and history of photography through producing works which resemble the seeing device. For instance, overhead projectors or objects that begin to imitate lenses. Mahady has a core interest in the fracture between intention and perception and the importance of the accidental gesture and human touch, thus seeking to frame the images as poetic, not narrative, objects.

Born 1994, Melbourne, Australia
Lives and works Melbourne, Australia

Erhan Tırlı is a Türk-Australian photographer who centers his practice around long-term ethnography of culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities in Melbourne, Australia. In this project, Tırlı explores ideas of cross-cultural belonging and existence beyond singular frameworks of identity through a series of collaborative portraits, still life, street photography, archival images and text. Of the work Tırlı notes: ‘You are Turkish or you are Australian. You are Western or you are Eastern. This kind of bipartisan reasoning denies our right to nuance, to multiplicity. Coaxing us into conformity.’ Engaging in a collaborative practice with his sitters leads to intimate insights and playful portraits which reveal a more nuanced, multifaceted, and at times surreal, representation of the participants that shifts thinking beyond common stereotypes.