More than all the ocean between us
Curated by Talia Smith

It is a sharp ice-down-your-back cold, with deep maternal warmth. It is familiar yet foreign, safe yet relentlessly dangerous. It’s home. In that moment in the ocean, I realised that despite the false divides I experience on the land, the ocean knows no such barrier.

– Lana Lopesi, False Divides

More than all the ocean between us is an ongoing research and curatorial project that investigates early career Pacific heritage artists who work with time based practices. In this first iteration six practitioners and five writers of Pacific Island heritage have been invited to discuss their practices in an attempt to map what is happening at an early career level and to piece together the developments of photographic and video practices from those that paved the way. As Pacific people we have claimed photography as a tool for sharing our stories, I believe we are now the authors of our own histories and this project aims to celebrate, highlight and critique what is being shared.

This is not a conclusion but rather a beginning.