About - Commentary

“Joel has created several solo shows that amount to an admirable body of photographic work that consistently alludes to fragments of what we could call life’s bigger picture, but without necessarily clearly elucidating his intentions. The latter is left, as it perhaps should be, to us, his audience, to unravel for ourselves in our individual ways.

“Clear topics of focus do regularly emerge though, which inevitably seek to metaphorically juxtapose the tangible and mundane with ethereal, less-worldly realms. Such concepts have demonstrated Joel’s fascination for the passing of time, or perhaps more accurately, life cycles. He has explored existential lifespans from days to centuries, and from seasons to the period of darkness we call night, which marks one day’s transition to the next.

“These more recent explorations investigate mysteries of life that permeate and make vulnerable our earthly existence. And so now Joel has expanded this motif of navigating “the other realm”, as he puts it, by turning his lens towards the circus.”

“Mystères is a constellation of strange stories. Characteristic to Joel Markham’s formal deliberation and carefully honed ambiguity, each of the four sequences here conveys a subtly constructed theme. Joel’s photography is adamant and precise, every angle finely defined, with lustrous black and complex tones. His work actively quotes other artists, citing their presence while re-situating them within new statements of his own invention. These are woven into places of significance within Wagga Wagga – the Civic Theatre, the travelling circus, the shadowy underpass of the Wollundry Lagoon and other liminal spaces. These conclude on the most private image of all, a memorial to the artist’s father, bearing the only word in the exhibition: ‘Love’.”

“Joel’s recent exhibitions allegorically cast the night at odds with the delicate security of an ethereal world. They deftly referenced the contemporaneous social dislocations brought on by a pandemic through a personal response, sharing aspects of the night that are common to many of us, such as fear, isolation and loneliness. They alluded to a dream world, conjured by our minds in the dark of night, where our behaviour adjusts accordingly.

“Joel’s current project is a valid deepening of these concepts, crafting mystery, as distanced from cold reality, and subsequently kindling an opportunity to explore, imagine, remember and ruminate. The result is deceptively simple images that work to broaden Joel’s own reflections on what matters, to allow us all to contemplate what matters to us as well.”

“I’ve had the pleasure of watching the maturation of Joel Markham’s arts practice for quite a few years now, from when he was my student in the undergraduate and Masters programs at CSU, through to when he was my colleague as a sessional lecturer in the Photography program, and since then as an independent practitioner.

“It is ultimately Joel’s creative work – beyond the academic – that evidences his profound self-reflective practice as an artist. His work manifests as a genuine, honest and truly heartfelt expression of his philosophical musings, which are worthy of our reflective thought.

“Joel uses simple but effective signature devices that deftly avoid cliché, such as allegorical and symbolic gestures, as well as apparent objectivity. These inspire metaphorical connections between his images by acting as visual isolators, often removing subjects from context and allowing the viewer to concentrate on the bigger picture.

“In Nocturne, Joel reduces his scale of reference to the nights that mark one day’s transition to the next. These are interruptions to the flow of time in a way, when shadows emerge that are cast from different energies than that of the sun. Indeed, in Jungian psychology the “shadow” is the term for the dark, hidden aspect of the ego.”