A photographic series displayed in Kingston's Outdoor Lightboxes that employs methods of still life photography to mediate between archival images and site photography. At its core, this research has centred on the poetic potential of the politics, technologies, and histories of communications technology—vast and often hidden networks that transmit the flow of global information.
The series draws upon archival materials from the State Library of Victoria’s telecommunication archives alongside photographs taken at the Deutsches Science and Technology Museum in Munich. Through a methodology of assemblage and still life photography, the work builds a fragmented visual narrative. Optical instruments sit alongside typesetting apparatus, forlorn letter writers appear against cartographic maps, and telegraph tapes emerge as tactile residues of a communications system both mechanical and intimate. These juxtapositions echo the layered ways in which technology mediates human expression, shaping not only how we connect but also how we imagine distance and proximity.
A Circular Exchange invites viewers into a space of reflection, foregrounding infrastructures that usually remain unseen yet structure our everyday lives. Telecommunications cables, telegraph systems, and related technologies are presented not only as technical objects but also as poetic conduits, charged with histories of longing, correspondence, and transmission. A Circular Exchange encourages dialogue about how information circulates, how connections falter or endure, and the imaginative possibilities embedded within the infrastructures that quietly govern our experience of communication.
Join the artist for a Celebration Event at Kingston Arts Centre, Moorabbin, including complimentary refreshments on Thursday evening 15 January 2026. Please check our website later to RSVP.
Katie Paine is an artist and writer living and working in Naarm. Her practice spans installation, video, narrative fiction, drawing, photography and occasionally performance. Paine has an interest in archival politics, semiotics, hauntology and science fiction. Recent research explores the serpentine trajectories of ideas and information across time. She has exhibited at spaces such as Spring 1883, Gertrude Contemporary, Metro Arts, tcb, Bundoora Homestead, Footscray Community Arts Centre, Composite Moving Image, Lon Gallery, CAVES, ACMI, Kings ARI, La Trobe Art Institute, Blindside, and Bus Projects, with upcoming exhibitions at, SEVENTH Gallery, Counihan Gallery and First Draft, Sydney.
Image credit: Katie Paine, A Circular Exchange 1, 2025, Archival inkjet print. Image courtesy the artist
Kingston Arts Centre
979-985 Nepean Hwy
Moorabbin VIC 3189
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