Loud and Luminous | Online Exhibition - Week 5

In an age where we all want equality, can the profoundly prelingually deaf find that acceptance that results from a sense of “we’re all on the same footing”?

Resulting from many anguishing personal and confusing and conflicting social experiences I am enduring persevering to live in a silent visual world. But it is a world that does not see equality not when we can’t communicate across to each other.

A country mother who contracts German measles knows there is a consequence – but shape will it take. The pressure to abort the unsuspecting foetus, combined with the tyranny of an unsuspecting husband leads to the birth of a deaf daughter. Snatched from certain “removal” to now a place in the sun. But did I find my place? The search is still on for equality. Is the issue my own self deaf identity - what I could be, or, is it the hearing’s private machination of what a deaf person ought to be?

I am a:

1. person
2. woman
3. sister family person
4. middle aged
5. deaf
6. not married binary
7. nonbinary
8. educated
9. white

Katrina Crook 

Observing this girl waiting at an aquarium-viewing window had a surreal sense of foreboding. When looming suddenly out of the murky yellow depths a seal appeared, only visible briefly in silhouette when very close to the glass. The seal enclosure’s water pump was broken.

Our future generation face systemic linked challenges. Not only progressing the battle for gender equality, they face attempting to narrow the gap with fiscal equality, the balance of nature and man, to enable environmental equality.

This image is part of an ongoing series Waiting, which examines the psychology of waiting and the conversational nature of reality.

Keira Hudson

This photograph is an 8x10” tintype, captured using a large format

camera and the wet plate collodion process. Each side of the plate was captured separately, using a half frame dark slide. The image is part of a series that explores our relationship with death, and what remains after our corporeal existence has ended. It is a celebration of the diversity of the human body, whilst acknowledging we all become equal in death.

Kelly Slater

I am exploring my identity in relation the colonisation of landscapes; I contemplate both the environmental impacts of colonisation and the legacy of my colonial ancestors.

Like the plantation pines growing row on row, I am the descendent of generations of immigrants, installed to be useful and provide resources for the country.

To be equal is to be an individual; to be recognised as inherently valuable, not because I’m useful but because I am.

Kellie North

For me as a photographic artist, I love to tell stories through my imagery. Be it my stories, other women’s stories, stories in which we all connect with in one way or another. I want other women, to remember, we are not alone on this journey through life, we are all together, equally, in this kindred sisterhood and should embrace all that we are, together as one.

When I started to create the images I create, I used myself as the story, I searched my own life for what I wanted to express and put out there into the world. Things which I was passionate about, experiences in which I has been through and used it as therapy to help me heal.

Speaking with other women, about my process and the stories I was wanting to portray through imagery I quickly realised my stories were not mine alone, but were shared with many. We were all singing from the same song sheet, so to speak.

Women are incredible. Unique, beautiful and strong and when we set aside what we ‘think’ our differences are, we find we are all equals in this game of life. Similar struggles, similar traumas, similar weaknesses, similar strengths. Looking at each other as a sister, equally, with love and support, we are able to bear witness to others as they truly are, and collectively, we will take each other to new heights.

Kimberley Wallis

My work focuses on capturing the dramatic scenes of commuters as they travel to and from the city of Melbourne each day. The public transport system of a city is the great social equalizer, all variations of socio-economic groups, ethnicities and ages use these intricately built systems to get to their destinations. By capturing the subject matter with a cinematic style, the subjects story unfolds for the viewer to interpret within their own personal bias and lens.

Kristen Flynn 

My art practice investigates identities through surrounding entities, which usually results in the foregrounding of binary oppositions such as man and nature, and in this case, beauty and deformity. I use juxtaposition and layering, to produce meaning both planned and accidental. Pomegranate Face is a self-portrait layered with a pomegranate grown by my grandmother. The organic shapes from the cross-section of the pomegranate play with my features suggesting possible make-up, bruises and deformity. I want to provoke reflection concerning the women in our lives and point out the complexity of current issues faced by women in today’s sociocultural climate.

Krystle Wright