As a counter to the concerns in this post Adam Dutkiewicz has reviewed the collaborative Mallee Routes 2019-2020 exhibition at the Murray Bridge Regional Gallery in South Australia. This was the final collaborative exhibition in this long term project. Adam’s review is below.

MALLEE ROUTES: Photographing the Mallee 2019

Gary Sauer-Thompson (SA), Gilbert Roe (SA), Eric Algra (Vic), Lars Heldmann (SA), Stuart Murdoch (Vic)

Murray Bridge Regional Gallery, 7 December 2019 – 12 January 2020

This is the last exhibition in a three-year project of photographing the Mallee regions, including the Wimmera, by photographers Gary Sauer-Thompson, Eric Algra and Gilbert Roe. The exhibition was expanded to accommodate all three rooms of the Murray Bridge gallery, and so required an expanded number of contributors, as Lars Heldmann and Stuart Murdoch. Director Fulvia Mantelli provided the extra exhibition space, helped to organize the exhibition, revised the colour of the gallery walls in the main room to dark grey, and devised the new spot lighting system which makes some of the work glow, as if back-lit. The result is a very large exhibition of photography of nearly 120 works, in itself an exceptional and substantial event in the local art calendar.