Photography / The Bees and the Ledger, by Kai Wasikowski. And An Satong Kawaran by George Cavelo. At PhotoAccess until June 14. Reviewed by CON BOEKEL.

The two exhibitions have in common the migrant experience.

Natalia Broadhurst came to Australia by cargo ship in the 1970s. Her Polish qualifications and her experience in port logistics were not accepted. So she made do – calling on her growing-up experience on a farm in Poland. She keeps bees. She made her own bee-proof suit. She made he own hive smoker.

Kai Wasikowski’s exhibition is focused on his grandmother Natalia and her two worlds. In the exhibition we see ships and ports, the world of a Polish professional woman. On the bees side we see objects from Natalia’s Australian life.

Wasikowski uses photography to document Broadhurst’s resilience and her skilled adaptation to adversity. He turns this into a fulcrum to build those family connections across generations that are both challenged by, and enriched by, migration. The power of the exhibition thus depends both on Wasikowski’s technical photography and on his deployment of photography as an interpersonal process. The outcomes are excellent. His use of the infinity screen to isolate each object forces an intense focus.

George Calvelo is a first generation Australian resident from the Philippines. His works exhibit the duality that is so often part of the migrant experience. One element documents the lively, immediate and vibrant life on the Philippine’s streets.

Here Calvelo creates a visual language of participant observation by including the camera in the near foreground of his street photography. It is simultaneously a message about the nature of photography and about the nature of the rough and tumble of, for example, a local cattle festival. Footage of a political protest involving citizens and riot police includes the crowd shouting references to Duterte and to Bongbong. The protest, and photographing it, were risky activities.

The second element of Calvelo’s exhibition consists of prints of film exposed once in the Philippines and again in Australia. Some of these images have a jittery, unsettling feel to them. They feature hard geometric vertical, horizontal and diagonal urban overlays. There are occasional touches of a softer and of an almost displaced humanity. These are excellent expressions of Calvelo’s migrant experience.

Combining these exhibitions is inspired curation by Gabrielle Hall-Lomax. Wasikowski and Calvelo share an instrumental view of photography but their experience is both individual and generational. Calvelo knows what he has left behind and what he is missing and can thus express this duality with a powerful immediacy. Wasikowski, a third generation migrant, knows that something distant is missing and uses his photography to grow emotional bridges between generations.

Both create wonderful imagery. Both make significant statements about the role of photography. Both grow in the migrant experience.

Sharing this is a gift to us all.