Martine Corompt, Eliza Hutchison, David Jolly, David Rosetzky, Darren Sylvester, Lyndal Walker

The first component of Co-Existenz, a cultural exchange between the Adam Art Gallery and the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, Happiness presented the photography, video and digital animation of six leading emerging Australian artists.

Utilising photo-based media to create and communicate personal experience, these six artists reflected on the performances of daily life. They were particularly concerned to imbue photography and film with the intimacies and ambiguities of internal lives and emotional states that are not commonly exposed in public. Some explore the individuality that manages to exist within the conformity of our consumer cultures, others allow their subjects to play up and act out imaginary roles for the camera.

Happiness was one of two exhibitions comprising the Co-Existenz project, an exchange of exhibitions, artwork and artists between neighbouring countries. The second, Parallel Worlds, featured lens-based practitioners from New Zealand. The artists involved were invited to exhibit new bodies of work, indicating their distinct practices and offering a snapshot of contemporary Australasian photomedia practice.