Opening this April at M16 Artspace, The Forest Passage is a deeply evocative photographic exhibition by artist Alex Flannery, whose lens is focused not on the grand or the picturesque, but on the quiet intricacies and layered textures of the Australian bush. Running from Friday 18 April to Sunday 11 May, with an opening night on Thursday 17 April, this show offers a moving reflection on the unseen, uncelebrated lives of the creatures who inhabit the forests just south of Canberra.
To the casual traveller, the alpine woodlands Flannery documents may appear sparse—repetitive hills dotted with grey trunks fading into the horizon. But The Forest Passage invites us to look again. In Flannery’s eyes, and through their work, this landscape is anything but empty. It is alive with the movement of animals, crisscrossed with secret paths, and humming with the presence of lives lived close to the earth.
The origin of this series began with a chance encounter: while walking through this bushland, Flannery startled a feral pig and her piglets. The moment was fleeting—they scattered across a creek and disappeared into the scrub. But following their trail, Flannery discovered a network of animal tracks woven into the undergrowth—evidence of a bustling world just beneath the human gaze.
Using a combination of trail cameras positioned low to the ground and a medium format camera, Flannery documents these animal highways with an approach that is part naturalist, part storyteller. The perspective is always intimate, grounded, and subtly anthropomorphic—suggesting the possibility of sentience, a glance returned, a moment shared between worlds.
These photographs are far from polished digital captures. Instead, they embrace the beautiful imperfections of their subjects and medium alike. Flannery uses both digital and analogue processes, printing the works in the darkroom using expired photographic paper and employing dodging and burning techniques to heighten the materiality of the images. Some began as digital files, others as traditional negatives later re-digitised. The result is a tactile, almost haunting visual language—rich with texture, shadow, and emotional resonance.
The animals we meet here—wombats with scarred hides, rabbits with notched ears, kangaroos weathered by years of exposure—are not idealised wildlife portraits. They are creatures marked by survival, resilience, and a raw kind of beauty. The forest, too, is not pristine. Trees bear the evidence of fire and age, limbs missing, bark charred. Yet in this rugged, worn environment, Flannery finds dignity and grace—a visual elegy for the enduring spirit of the bush.
Ultimately, The Forest Passage is more than a documentation of nature—it is a quiet meditation on presence, perception, and the layered relationship between humans and the more-than-human world. Through this body of work, Alex Flannery offers us not just images, but encounters—fleeting, mysterious, and deeply moving.
Exhibition Details
Gallery 2, M16 Artspace, 21 Blaxland Cres, Griffith ACT 2603
18 April – 11 May 2025
Opening Night: Thursday 17 April, 6pm–8pm
Free Entry
RSVP essential via the M16 website
