Conflict Zone at Noosa Regional Gallery
Michael Brennan explores what transforms the ordinary into art.
It takes a sort of detachment to photographically document the grittiness and peculiarities of the world. Or maybe that’s a connectedness. Is it possible to be in both states at the same time?
A photographer is necessarily one step removed from what they see. That tiny little hole that they peer though (I know – they don’t need to do that anymore, but it aids the analogy) puts a physical barrier between the eye and what it’s trained on.
It’s like looking through a hole in a wall that separates the observer from the observed. And to stumble upon the subject matter seems like it requires one to step outside the stuff that absorbs other people as they occupy their narratives and go about their lives.
But then I imagine you need to be keyed in as well. There’s likely a kind of instinct that develops over time – a subconscious faculty for picking out the interesting in the everyday as opposed to the dull. Personalities, attitudes, surface treatments, unintentional abstraction, frames of reference, points of view.
It’s not like capturing an event or shooting a war, but it is in those moments of conflict – when a visual condition clashes with its context, or a person grates against their surrounds – that subjects seem to jump out. This documentary approach seeks out the exceptional in the ordinary, even if that exceptional is only so because of the way it is framed. The urban landscape is its own kind of conflict zone.
Newer Documents, 2026 is an exhibition curated by Sunshine Coast based photographer, Kim Guthrie, that takes its inspiration (and a good bit of its title) from the landmark MOMA exhibition, New Documents, 1967. That show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) brought together the work of three young and relatively unknown photographers named Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, and Garry Winogrand, who brought a unique and transformative aesthetic to the photography of the day.
Guthrie’s exhibition sets out to take a snapshot (sorry!) of the show’s far reaching influence, bringing together five contemporary Australian photographers (including himself), whose documentation of the world continues this way or working. Tommy Backus, James Bugg, Renata Filippi, Kim Guthrie and Susan Mountford present an exceptionally captivating collection of images that draw our attention to the ordinary and the often overlooked.
Documenting the world is now ubiquitous. But unfortunately, it’s highly curated as well. We either present the best versions of ourselves or cast shade on others to our own ends. But an important few persevere with neither of these projects. Instead, they’re drawn to the unusual. They do so without judgement. They help us see things we might not ordinarily see. Their eye naturally seeks out things in conflict with their surrounds. And that is where the real art lies.
Newer Documents, 2026 is a free exhibition at Noosa Regional Gallery from 19 September- 22 November.
www.noosaregionalgallery.com.au
