GROUP EXHIBITION

Navigating the experience of distance, dislocation and ongoing uncertainty, Palestinian artist Taysir Batniji documented two years of WhatsApp calls with his mother in Gaza; each communication shaped and destabilised by conflict. Argentinian artist Mariela Sancari’s typology of portraits depicts 70-year-old men dressed in her late father’s clothes show us a deeply personal journey of processing grief for a parent who is no longer present.

Charting motherhood and identity Australian photographer EJ Hassan, who passed away in September 2024, photographed her twin sons Beau and Kai with a tenderness and poetry that shines through in each personal and diaristic image. Similarly candid, unique and often humorous, Annie Wang’s mother-son portraits record 22 years of time passing and inter-generational bonds shifting within a traditional Taiwanese context.

The healing potential of photography is evident in Malay-Australian artist Nur Aishah Kenton’s images, where the camera is used to reconnect with her mother and propose their sharing of the weight of generational cycles of loss and trauma. Similarly cathartic in process, Australian artist Abigail Varney layers archival images and family photographs, alongside her own work to construct a vivid, celebratory portrait of her late mother.

‘Familial’ reveals sons and daughters photographing parents, and parents photographing children – sometimes slowly over decades, sometimes with urgency. This exhibition shows us that to photograph another person is to know them differently, to see them afresh; and that to see the images made by a parent or an offspring is to see the world anew, through their eyes, a gift!

A Centre for Contemporary Photography exhibition, presented in partnership with, and supported by Town Hall Gallery, Hawthorn Arts Centre, City of Boroondara.