Last year, prior to the conclusion of SALA 2024, I, along with many other South Australian photographers who did much the same, responded to an invitation to put forward a proposal towards the potential awarding of a “Photographic Opportunity”, a major solo photography exhibition. I was lucky enough to be awarded the opportunity.

The award included $20,000 worth of in kind support for a major photography exhibition, including all production costs; printing, some mounting, some framing, from Paul Atkins at Atkins Pro Lab, mentorship from Gavin Blake, the Director of the Centre for Creative Photography in Hendon and the hanging of a major exhibition at Praxis Artspace in Bowden during this year’s SALA, kindly donated by the Gallery Director Patty Chehade. It also included all costs involved in featuring the exhibition in this year’s SALA Festival along with promotional opportunities.

My proposal? Medium and large format B&W film portraits of SA artists with a twist. The twist was that each of the artists were invited to bring along something that inspires them, they cherish or have created, to be featured in the portrait.

The exhibition includes film portraits of up to 75 South Australian visual artists. Some of the subjects who collaborated include; Angela Valamanesh, Tom Moore, Christopher Orchard, Julia Robinson, Aldo Iacobelli, Clare Belfrage, Kirsten Coelho, Zaachariaha Fielding, Jeffrey Harris, Tom Phillips, Jasmine Crisp, Johnnie Dady with more than 50 others. Over two thirds of the portraits hang on the walls of Praxis Artspace with the remainder being projected on the wall of a theatrette within Praxis.

The vast majority of the portraiture took place in my warehouse apartment in Port Adelaide utilising subdued natural light from an adjacent window. There were twelve portraits taken of each subject, two on large format B&W film and the remainder on medium format B&W film. The films were developed in my laundry and later hung in my shower to dry. From there each film frame was scanned, (about 1200 in total) from which about 300 were prepared for printing or projection. Atkins Pro Lab was supplied with 50 of the prepared digital files for limited edition printing on archival cotton rag using archival inks.

The exhibition title: offering[s]