Hillvale Presents
13 September — Sunday 6 October 2024
Hillvale Presents - 2024 group exhibition, install view.
Hillvale Presents was our major group exhibition for 2024.
Ben Hattingh’s work taps into this undercurrent of disillusionment. His stark, unpeopled landscapes reflect the eerie calm of a society where familiar structures no longer function as they once did, leaving behind an unsettling void. Clem McNabb’s artful and intimate eye depicts a community of trans people they met just after turning 21. Ed Gorwell’s selection of everyday moments mainly focuses on unplanned still life arrangements allowing the viewer to reconsider the relationships that exist between the spaces, objects and people.
Kaede James Takamoto and EJ Hassan present their collaborative project ‘Palaver’ is an on-going visual dialogue centered around female identity and their response to feeling seen. Gabrielle Hall-Lomax’s collection of images are from an ongoing project exploring identity, memory, and intergenerational connections among women, with a focus on matrilineal heritage. Harley & Händen’s practice showcases the life of sex workers through playful film photography. Lina Zackariya maintains a deep connection to her Islamic faith and South-Asian culture, through a focus on the resilience and beauty in maintaining tradition while navigating and integrating a different cultural landscape.
Mert Berdilek, an Australian-Turkish filmmaker and photographer traversed 8000km+ on road across Türkiye, to explore how the country has changed, or hasn't since its formation 100 years ago. Sarah Cutbush’s project Hidden Valley encapsulates her interest in speculative documentary photography, exploring how this way of working can be used to address silences within the community archive. Sophie Smith is interested in the representation of feminine-presenting people in fashion and how this influences individual constructions of femininity. Wilhelm Philipp’s delves into Australia’s thriving paleontology scene in ‘Dinosaur Dreaming’, through documenting four digs spanning from 2019-2023.
Catalogue
View full catalogue (PDF)
Install
Ben Hattingh is a Melbourne-based artist and Art Therapist primarily specialising in photography. His artistic practice explores the relationships between images and the ways meaning is created and manipulated through context. @_benhattingh
Clem McNabb is a photographer from Naarm/Melbourne. Their work focuses on how photography interacts with community in various forms.
@clemcnabb
Ed Gorwell is a photographer from Melbourne, Australia. Gorwell’s work focuses on people’s relationships with domestic, urban, built, and natural environments. Having completed an undergraduate in media, and a masters in environment policy, Gorwell’s day job is in politics and this combination of interests, has influenced his photography; which is grounded in the way people relate to space – urban space, natural environments and domestic settings.
@edgorwell
EJ Hassan (1982-2024) was a photographer based in Naarm (Melbourne), Australia who lived and worked on the land of the Bunurong/Boonwurrung people, bringing over two decades of teaching experience to her exploration of identity, memory, and thecomplexities of womanhood, motherhood, and youth. Through her lens, she delved into themes of lineage, legacy,and diverse perspectives, intricately intertwining personal and collective histories. EJ’s work captured intimate moments and relational encounters with compassion and empathy, reflecting on the enduring impact of history and heritage while celebrating the richness of human perceptions and understanding of the world. Collaborative in her approach, she drew inspiration from lived experiences, fostering mutual respect with her subjects. With a gentle pace, EJ allowed authentic moments to unfold naturally, inviting viewers to contemplate the interconnectedness of past, present, and future. Her art serves as a bridge between disparate vantages, highlighting the beauty found in embracing multiplicity and the profound impact of individual and collective narratives on shaping our shared humanity.
@ejhassan_photography
Kaede James Takamoto is a Queer Japanese-Australian photographer based in Naarm (Melbourne) and the daughter oftwo sculptors, grew up immersed in art which has informed and shaped her artistic and commercial work. Throughout her personal image-making she reflects on the intersections within her own lived experiences, celebrating the intricacies of layered personhood.
@kaedejt
Gabrielle Hall-Lomax is a visual artist and curator working between Ngunnawal/Canberra and Naarm/Melbourne. She uses analogue photography, darkroom printing, and self-portraiture to deconstruct notions of women’s experiences and cultural histories. Initially drawing from an autobiographical context, her work expands to interrogate how her experiences fit into broader societal contexts. Gabrielle also holds workshops in analogue film processing and printing, as well as experimental darkroom practices.
@gabriellehall_lomax
Harley & Händen is a Townsville-born artist, graphic designer and photographer living on the unceded lands of the Kulin Nation. She is an ex-sex worker of 8 years in clubs and establishments which further encouraged her artwork practices from using models from adult magazines for her collages, to photographing peers from the industry. She had no interest in photography until she learnt about a Nimslo film camera. This camera fires 4 lens at once, each slightly apart, to produce 4 images from 4 different angles. Once developed, scanned and edited, the final product is a 3D photo, making you feel like you’re immersed there in the shot.
@harleyandhanden69
Lina Zackariya is a versatile creative professional based in Naarm/Melbourne, currently pursuing work across disciplines including filmmaking and production design for screen media. Lina was born and raised in Melbourne, yet maintains a deep connection to her Islamic faith and South-Asian culture. A child of immigrants, navigating this fine balance between feeling a part of both worlds, but equal parts not belonging to either, Lina aspires to showcase the perspective of this unique “third culture” through her photography works. Lina’s most recent design project includes ’The Current’ (2024) a black-comedy short film directed by Alasdair Gardiner shot in Virtual Production in collaboration with Nant Studios, Docklands.
@linazackariya
Mert Berdilek is a Melbourne based Australian-Turkish Photographer & Filmmaker. Mert’s work focuses on CALD artists focusing and returning to their roots, for artistic exploration on core themes experienced by many migrant children living in diaspora. Mert’s two major projects in 2024 address the same concept of “Reverse Migration” in two different mediums; 1/ Tersine Göç (‘Reverse Migration’ in Turkish) is documentary portrait photography project shot from West to East Türkiye, 2/ Geride Kalanlar (‘The Remains’ in Turkish) is a debut feature film project, entering production in December 2024, during winter in Eastern Türkiye.
@mertber
Sarah Cutbush is a lens-based artist living and working in Melbourne (Naarm). Hidden Valley encapsulates her interest in speculative documentary photography, exploring how this way of working can be used to address silences within the community archive.Now completing her Honours year, she is working with video and installation to explore how moving-image can facilitate dialogue between past and present versions of the self.
@sarah.cutbush
Sophie Smith is an Australian fashion photographer based in Naarm. Her work explores alternative femininities that playfully subvert the gender codes embedded in the feminine bodies of highfashion imagery. It is also a sanctuary for her to transform her own fantasia into a reality that is lyrical, uncanny yet also humorous. Sophie graduated from RMIT University in 2022 with an honours degree in a Bachelor of Arts in Photography.
@sophiesmith.photo
Wilhelm Philipp is an award-winning photographer born and bred in Box Hill, Melbourne. Philipp’s work specialises in documenting the everyday world and searching for stories of the human condition, creating emotional, meaningful and thought-provoking bodies of work. An intrigued artist, Wilhelm constantly pursues discovery, searching for moments thatmake him feel alive. From a pool of over 18,000 entries worldwide, Wilhelm won the ‘Portrait’ category at the Booooooom x Format 2023 Photo Awards. His photographs have also been shortlisted for the British Journal of Photography’s Portrait of Humanity Award, The Royal Photographic Society’s International Photography Exhibition 165 and Photo Collective’s Australian Photography Awards.
@wilhelmphilipp