Expedition

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BACKGROUND The Centre for Contemporary Photography is Victoria's leading fine art photography exhibitor where exhibitions such as this are peer selected through the Centre's applications process. Hulbert's series Expedition features 9 large pigment photographic prints. His research challenges the conventions of colonialism and undoes the mapping of 'rightful' possession of the land to usurp the space and place of occupation and memory so as to question how western can be seen as national. The allegory of 'Aussie adventurer' lays claim to sites, locations and territories enabling a consideration of how these constructed environments act as historical and contemporary markers for aspects of our national identity. CONTRIBUTION In researching ways to create a dynamic tension to enable one to fundamentally address the notion of 'expedition' and nation, as part of our ongoing relationship with the land Hulbert plays with realism, composition and constructed reality and its interpretation. In works such as Broken Hill Speedway and Sculpture Garden the construction of the picture plane undermines our relationship with the land by disrupting historical and contemporary markers. Other more formalist images (e.g. Shooting Range and Calder Park Raceway) explore a spare aesthetic marking reterritorialization of the land in a constructed environment with a conversant loss of original meaning. SIGNIFICANCE Reviews included Australian Photo Review's Robert MacFarlane who says Hulbert:'.. eloquently conveys a desiccated world devoid of people - perhaps as society may appear with the passing of civilization.'