Larger than life
As anyone who lives there can attest, Glebe is home to a wide variety of characters – and a new exhibition aims to capture that vitality, when 150 life-sized photographic portraits of the suburb’s most colourful identities goes on exhibition.
Tying in with the suburb’s sesquicentennial celebrations, ‘150 Locals’ was chosen as the theme for the inaugural Grand Tour exhibition, which kicks off on Saturday, October 24. The photographs, taken by Australian photographers North Sullivan and Tom Psomotragos, will be exhibited across nearly 60 locations, including outdoor public spaces, apartment facades, shop windows and cafés.
Artist Reg Mombassa, honky-tonk piano player Bridie King, and author Peter Corris (of Cliff Hardy fame) are among the 150 Glebe residents featured in the exhibition.
The Grand Tour Gallery is a new initiative of the Glebe Chamber of Commerce to provide a public space where Australian photographers can showcase their artworks.
Photographer North Sullivan said he looked forward to sharing his passion for the suburb through the exhibit. “I wanted to capture that diversity, colour and vibrancy that is the Glebe community, and wanted to present that to the wider audience, while giving something back to my local community,” he said.
Mr Sullivan’s photographs reflect a diverse Glebe society, with subjects ranging from an 18-year-old Aboriginal girl to waterside mansions. “It’s very much about the diversity of the Glebe community,” he said. “It [ranges] from the intellectuals, a lot of artists, some quite wealthy areas of Glebe, [to] your more traditional people.
“There are those that hark back to the working class heritage of the area. People living in mansions on the waterfront and people living in public housing, and [the contrast of] living side-by-side – I think that’s what I wanted to show,” he said.
One of most striking photographs is of Yowie and Oden – a young Aboriginal couple embracing in the middle of Broadway Shopping Centre.
“Yowie was 18 and Oden, the father, was just 16 at the time. So it was something I identified that I wanted to capture,” Mr Sullivan said.
“I chose the shopping centre because to me it reflected that Broadway community, but it also reflected the affluence that we find in Glebe and the inner city, and the contrast with these two kids who clearly were not affluent and not symbolic of your traditional family relationship. It really reflects the more marginalised side of the inner-city, Glebe community.”
The 150 Locals exhibition runs until November 28 throughout Glebe.
by Ehssan Veiszadeh
