Traditionally, photographs reveal the character of places like Perth through iconography or colour (Bankwest Tower, sunsets). “This is the opposite of that,” says curator Chelsea Hopper. With HERE&NOW17: New Photography, Hopper describes that the way a photograph is taken, the activity of looking, is equally compelled by place.

The exhibition musters six Western Australian artists – Jacqueline Ball, Scott Burton, Lucy Griggs, Dan McCabe, Lydia Trethewey and Georgia Kaw – who approach photography obliquely, tinkering with documentation, light and printing to see Perth unconventionally.

Snapped by iPhone on Perth’s four ‘corridor’ train lines, a series of tiny photographs by Scott Burton document the brightness and utility of the liminal spaces that link Perth’s gentrified precincts. Usually ‘exhibited’ on Instagram, Hopper relocates them to the gallery, articulating the vitality of the margins of photography.

In Kings Park, Lucy Griggs picks wildflowers (some native, some nominal natives). These are laid on cyanotype paper, which reacts to sunlight and records the blossom’s outline in deep indigo, the colour of Perth’s noon sky. “Perth is the sunniest city. We get 8.8 hours of sunlight a day,” Hopper reports. “Lucy uses this light as a camera.”