A very big thanks to Aileen Moka, Director of Vermilion Art, for inviting me to co-curate this exhibition and to Gallery Manager Abigail Kim.

I am excited to curate photographic work by two artists I was unfamiliar with. Firstly, a big welcome to Yi Hui, a Chinese photo artist who has travelled all the way from Guilin and with her daughter, Duo Duo. We are thrilled to welcome you both. Then, we also welcome Sonia Payes, a powerhouse of energy from Melbourne, whom I am surprised I did not know about.

Both artists employ the medium of photography in markedly different ways. Landscapes of Being is Aileen Moka’s title, and I have already learnt from that title as landscape is firmly set within the history of Chinese painting. Yi Hui’s vividly coloured photographs depict her daughter centre frame with the familiar Guilin mountain background, in which Chinese art of the past has overwhelmingly been black and white. Embracing the future and striding out hopefully is the message I get in these photographs. Duo Duo, as the model, expresses the hopeful glee of youth, throwing a ball as she is stepping forward into the future.

Chinese landscape is full of symbolic references. Yi Hui includes these with subtle ease in objects like a contemporary plastic version of the bamboo fishing raft, with model awkwardly balancing. Therein lies a possible key to interpreting clues to these artworks. Duo Duo has been photographed by her mother throughout her life and is clearly comfortable with the camera’s eye. The portraits may contain influences of fashion photography and western painting traditions. ‘Ophelia’, however, wears that recognisable Chinese red also found in many of the photographs.

The works are taken at dawn before sunrise or sunset to indicate the symbolism of in between and transition as an adolescent. The theme is about fleeting moments of innocence fading away. Their likeness to classical paintings is not intended, however her theme is similar to that of the masters. It brought out similarities.

Sonia Payes, is represented by Scott Livesey Studio in Melbourne. Her early work was photographic portraiture, publishing a book of portraits of contemporary artists in 2014. Since then she has worked across sculpture, video, 3-dimensional work, multimedia and experimental art. Sonia has had 26 solo exhibitions since 2003, three times as many groups shows, and an unquantifiable list of prizes, awards and grants. Later in 2016 she published Transformations, the Art of Sonia Payes, written by Ashley Crawford.

Sonia’s work is bold and broad and far reaching in its use of media to express her ideas about the environment and our vast need to learn from and adapt to the environmental changes happening around us at this time in history. Most of her more recent work is dealing directly with the environment, a subject she says she was tutored about by her daughter Ilana. Ilana is not here in person, but you can see her presence in the three digital combination animations on the front left wall which are made up of multiple images layered over decades of her lifetime. She features on the same wall, within the elegant 9-image frieze on the back left side of the gallery.

The commonality, in the selection of two artists who engaged their inspiration by having female children whose artist parents engaged them as their muse. The daughters of the mothers figure strongly in the works in very different ways. May these artists’ children be proactive in making the world a better place. Here is a toast to Duo Duo and Ilana.

Sandy Edwards

12 March 2026