At PhotoAccess in Canberra, an interesting exhibition titled Light | Intersection by Melbourne/Naarm-based artist Alex Walker is currently on view until 10 May 2025. Blurring the boundaries between photography, installation, and spatial experience, the show invites viewers into a world where light becomes both subject and material—something to move through, not merely to look at.
In her accompanying exhibition text, writer Kathryne Genevieve Honey eloquently describes the experience of engaging with Walker’s immersive work:
“What would it feel like to walk into a photograph? Would the air hum with the static of captured light, or shift and flicker like an image coming into focus? Light would not only illuminate but shape the space around you, stretching across angles, casting shifting forms, dissolving boundaries between the image and your own body. In this moment, sight becomes tactile.
This is what it feels like entering into one of Walker’s installations. Light no longer simply revealing—it bends, fractures, and extends, pulling you in, to a space that is both static and shifting. Shadows stretch and warp as you move, your body casts imprints onto the work, as both observer and participant.
In Light | Intersection Naarm-based artist, Alex Walker, expands the photographic medium beyond the surface, drawing viewers into a dynamic encounter where light is both subject and material. Responding to the architecture of the gallery, Walker constructs a shifting, immersive environment where shadows, projections, and reflective surfaces blur distinctions between two and three dimensions in a kaleidoscopic exploration of abstraction.
Central to the exhibition are four large photographic works, Window Warp I and II which are meticulously hand printed in the colour darkroom, alongside Looking Under and Looking Through a pair of dye sublimation prints mounted on angled, slanted platforms that push them outward from the wall at a perfect 45 degree angle (which just so happens to be the angle that light bounces around inside a camera). All of which are encased in sleek, mirror polish metal frames or with reflective edges, these pieces challenge the boundary between the image and its surrounding space. Each composition presents an abstracted blur of colour—vivid magentas, rich cyans, and deep yellows—melding together in a hazy, dreamlike pane. There is no defined subject, no focal point; instead, the viewer is drawn into the subtle interplay of grain and distortion. The soft, unfocused quality of the image resists resolution, suggesting depth without ever solidifying into a fixed perspective. These works destabilise perception, leaving the eye searching for a point of clarity that never fully arrives.
Embedded within the ceiling, eight illuminated light boxes extend the imagery of the framed works. Their glowing surfaces echo the colours and abstract compositions, yet their placement alters their effect. Below them, a series of mirrors lay mapped across the floor, creating an uncanny duplication. What exists above also exists below. When we look down, we see up. The installation transforms the viewer into an active participant, shifting between worlds of reflection and light. Space collapses and expands, dissolving the line between surface and depth, image and architecture.
A single-channel projection introduces yet another layer of optical play. A still image—distilled, frozen—appears on the wall, but its presence is anything but static. The projection passes through a slowly rotating glass prism, causing the image to refract, fragment, and subtly shift. This kinetic element introduces a continuous flux; the projected light bends and twists, stretching the image across surfaces in unexpected ways. Shadows emerge and dissolve. The projection, at once precise and elusive, calls attention to the very nature of vision itself—how we see, how we interpret, and how light shapes our perception of space.
Walker’s practice is rooted in analogue photographic processes, yet extends beyond traditional image-making. Her work explores how light travels, bends, and refracts, transforming spatial perception in the process. Here, photography is not just about capturing a moment but constructing an optical experience that unfolds over time.Light | Intersection is both an extension of and departure from traditional photographic methods. The installation embraces the physicality of light, layering it like pigment in a painting, constructing an environment that shifts as viewers move through it. The image is no longer static—it is unstable, fragmented, always in flux. By collapsing different planes of vision and reintroducing them through light-based interventions, Walker reimagines the role of photography. This is not an exhibition about capturing reality but about constructing an alternative one—where the act of perception itself becomes the subject. Light, space, and movement converge in an ever-changing dialogue, inviting us to consider: what is an image, and where does it begin or end? In Light | Intersection, photography is not a window into another world, but a space to inhabit, reframe, and reimagine.”
About the Artist
Alex Walker is a Melbourne/Naarm-based artist and trained darkroom photographer whose work explores the boundaries of photographic practice. With a deep interest in analogue processes and expanded photographic theory, Walker moves beyond traditional image-making to investigate how light shapes space and perception.
Her practice is grounded in the material qualities of photography—light, paper, lens, and film—yet it reaches far into the realm of installation and spatial intervention. Drawing on the literal meaning of photography as “drawing with light,” Walker creates environments where photographs are not simply seen but experienced. Through the use of projections, reflective surfaces, custom-built structures, and kinetic elements, her work transforms the act of viewing into a multi-sensory, physical encounter.
Walker’s work invites the viewer to slow down, to notice the way light moves, how it behaves, and how it shapes what and how we see. She encourages us to question the role of photography in a world increasingly flooded with images—and instead, to rediscover it as a practice of perception, presence, and transformation.
Exhibition Details
Title: Light | Intersection
Artist: Alex Walker
Dates: 10 April – 10 May 2025
Location: PhotoAccess, Manuka Arts Centre, Canberra
Opening Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10am – 4pm
Admission: Free
Website: www.photoaccess.org.au
