Artworks will be available to be collected or shipped from Koorie Heritage Trust from Tuesday 24 February 2026 once the exhibition has closed. See our FAQ for more info.


Axel Garay (he/him), Meriam (Eastern Torres Strait)
Untitled, 2024
gold toned, salt gelatine silver prints on Bergger Cot 320 100% cotton archival paper, salvaged antique frame
124 x 98 x 6 cm

The self portrait is printed in the 19th century process using salt and gelatine on 100% cotton paper. I am interested in the ways that imaging technologies are adopted, adapted and discarded in short term corporate life cycles. Salt prints are some of the first photographic processes ever invented and were used to depict First Nation’s people in the 19th century colonial period around the world.

I utilise these processes as a defiant act and to explore the soul of these particular chemical compositions when exposed with natural light. I find that using antique processes to explore contemporary issues collapses the past, present, future. In the portrait, I am adorned with both organic and artificial materials, embracing the discards of the wastes of technology. The frame itself is a crumbling relic of a past era, found discarded on the side of the road. Throughout my work, I highlight the very material impacts that new technologies have on our homelands and waterways.

More broadly, I am interested in how we incorporate and encapsulate emerging technologies into our folklores (for better or worse). I explore how our contemporary age is consuming our knowledges in new and more advanced ways e.g. predatory algorithms, theft of language and culture through training of corporate large language models and the impacts of mechanistic thinking on our sense of self.