'A Circular Exchange' by Katie Paine
Next date: Monday, 19 January 2026 | 02:00 PM
to Saturday, 14 March 2026 | 11:59 PM
An exhibition investigating historical communications technologies, drawing from archival images from the State Library of Victoria’s telecommunication archives and photographs taken at the Deutsches Science and Technology Museum in Munich
The photographic series, A Circular Exchange, 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.
Image credit: Katie Paine, A Circular Exchange 1 (detail), 2025, Archival inkjet print. Image courtesy the artist.
About the artist
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.
Join a free public program
Join the artist for a free public program related to the exhibition at Kingston Arts Centre, Moorabbin.
Bookings are required and will open closer to the exhibition dates.
When
-
Friday, 16 January 2026 | 12:00 AM
- Saturday, 14 March 2026 | 11:59 PM
Location
Outdoor Lightbox Gallery
Kingston Arts Centre,
979 Nepean Highway, Moorabbin, 3189, View Map
Consider walking, cycling or using public transport options, leaving your car at home.
-37.9335035,145.0355722
979 Nepean Highway ,
Moorabbin 3189
Kingston Arts Centre
979 Nepean Highway ,
Moorabbin 3189
'A Circular Exchange' by Katie Paine
Accessibility
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