Australian Photographers Katherine Griffiths & Gavin Libotte Launch Chippendale Exhibition

This November, Australian photographers Katherine Griffiths and Gavin Libotte are taking over Chippendale’s Peach Black Gallery as part of the 2026 Head On Photo Festival. 

The dual exhibition, entitled Liminality | Passenger, showcases ordinary encounters transformed into intimate portraiture, each photograph musing on what it means to see and be seen.

Gavin Libotte’s Passenger

In Passenger, Gavin Libotte captures candid moments aboard Sydney’s iconic ferries. Libbotte’s portraits are moody, chiaroscuro-infused depictions of passengers going about their everyday lives, each quiet moment of candid existence, waiting, and perhaps rumination rendered with unprecedented importance.

Winner of the 2025 Mayor of Waverley Prize for Best Series at Head On and a finalist in both the Portrait and Exposure categories of the 2026 Head On Photo Awards, Libotte enjoys immortalising the inner lives of people as revealed through their most unguarded moments.

“I am interested to explore the in-between spaces, where passive moments reveal our isolation and who we are when we think no one is looking,” said Libotte.

Katherine Griffiths’ Liminality

In contrast, Griffiths’ exploration of a more intentional typology of portraiture takes audiences to the secluded Upper Colo region, bordering the Blue Mountains, where participants of a women’s circle are invited to face the camera.

Griffiths’ portraits are wilful, although somehow no less candid or vulnerable, her subjects almost challenging in the directness with which they meet the camera’s gaze.

Griffiths’ photographs have been recognised in major Australian photography prizes, including the National Photographic Portrait Prize, Moran Contemporary Photographic Prize, and the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award, among others. 

“When women gather with intention, something powerful happens. This is a portrait series showing women in a state of awakening and remembrance. There is a vulnerability in portraiture, and it’s important for me to allow honesty to be seen without my influence.” said Griffiths says. 

Liminality | Passenger opens Thursday 12 November at Peach Black Gallery, 126 Abercrombie Street, Chippendale.