OCULI PRESENTS

Presented by the Oculi Collective, Oculi Presents brings together photographers Elise Derwin, David Maurice Smith and Tajette O'Halloran for an evening of slide presentations exploring contemporary Australian stories shaped by place, memory, community and lived experience. Working across documentary and conceptual photographic practices, each artist reflects on communities navigating environmental instability, intergenerational histories and the social realities embedded within regional Australia.

Derwin’s ongoing project This Is Where We Live examines the long-term aftermath of the 2022 floods in Lismore, tracing the emotional and social consequences of displacement, housing insecurity and the dismantling of community networks in North Lismore. Smith’s Where the Floodwaters Escape offers a nuanced portrait of Wilcannia and the Barkindji community, reflecting on the complexities of representation, power and documentary practice shaped through seven years of engagement. O’Halloran’s work explores adolescence, inherited experience and the emotional relationship between identity and environment within the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, considering how personal and collective histories shape lived experience across generations.

Together, these works speak to the complexities of contemporary Australia through deeply personal, place-based photographic storytelling.