Liminal Body is a finalist in two major Australian photographic award exhibitions in 2025 - the Bowness Photography Award and the Olive Cotton Award for Photographic Portraiture

Liminal Body  2025

David floats in shallow water—nude, eyes closed, hair adrift. His quiet, vulnerable presence resists traditional portrayals of masculinity rooted in power, control, and dominance. Placed within a fluid, liminal space, the ageing, unidealized male body is no longer performing but simply being—suspended between elements, between identities. With no assertive gaze, the image asks not to be consumed but gently witnessed. More than a portrait, this is a meditation on transformation. It gestures toward rebirth and a reimagined masculinity—unmade not by rejection or force, but through the radical acts of tenderness and surrender. David Chemke, life partner of artist Ella Dreyfus, is a willing participant in her photographic work—bringing grace, intimacy, and trust to each collaboration.

Life Force, 2024

Health and longevity were paramount to my mother and upon discovering online shopping, her passion for purchasing pills increased exponentially. This collection of 475 tablets, potions and lotions, represent her predilection for self-proscribing with ‘natural’ remedies. The supplements and cremes might have improved the quality and functionality of her body, if the claims on the labels are to be believed. However, one distinctly pharmaceutical product was guaranteed to be 100% effective. At the back of her garage, in an unnamed box, was a sealed bottle of Pisabental, the equivalent of Nembutal. With the onset of dementia and my mother’s subsequent death from Alzheimer’s Disease, the choice to prolong or end life was taken out of her hands.

All Roads Lead to Kandos, Cementa Friendship Exhibition at the Mudgee Arts Precinct Gallery 2024

This was a participatory artwork that brought people together by inviting them to articulate their relationships to each other with pen on paper, via the town of Kandos. It was created on-location in the former waiting room of the Kandos Railway Station for Cementa Arts Festival in 2019.   The artwork challenged audiences to discover, declare and rejoice in the ways they were related to one another.