Michaela Gamble's We Were Here is a visual meditation on a part of Australia that seems to have missed out on the "Australian Dream". The catalogue of subjects depicted is arguably depressing and the overall exhibition could be said to present a negative view of remote towns, places and people. But while there is certainly an interrogative sociological dimension, the artist's "argument" is delivered through 15 stunning photographs. The first work, See Ed, shows a dilapidated (almost all the buildings in this exhibition show signs of dilapidation) tyre repair operation. The tin shed sits starkly in its surrounding grounds, alone and unrelated to its site. There are no people. The only life is the stand of thriving gum trees behind the shed. This is an image of what was and what will no longer be. The use of black-and-white is particularly pertinent to the overall "theme" of the exhibition. Its documentary character and stance of objective distance is delivered with a crisp clarity and precision.

The same sense of times past and lost is neatly captured in Local Cinema. One Night Only (Cat.2). There is a sense of poignant emptiness and hopelessness in this image. Again, black-and-white delivers the message with a quietly intrusive emotional touch, a character that is at work throughout the exhibition.

A House and a Street Sign (Cat. 5) continues the message of isolation in an image of desolation and again, emptiness delivered through a powerfully direct and confrontational image. Cat. 9 (Opal City, Caravan Club) is almost surreal in the extremeness of the sense of isolation here. The caravan is an absurd presence in the flat and topographically eventless landscape. The idea that it is exemplary of a club becomes even more absurd in the overall context of the exhibition. The images of people add another dimension to the feeling of remoteness and disassociation evoked by the buildings and other structures. Each image is singular.

Dave (Cat. 10) is accompanied by a dog and a pup. Even here the distance between Dave and the dog is pointed. Dave looks up at the viewer, beer in hand and kneeling in the dust. He has the look of someone who has had a tough life but resignedly accepts what he has been offered. This exhibition questions what Australia is or at least questions the majority's assumptions about what Australia is. The images are tough and interrogative. The strength of their technical means delivers the artist's message with precision and a direct beauty.

The Spirit Within Australia: The Land and The People is a project featuring "original photographic-based art produced using historic hand-crafted processes from both well-known and emerging photographic artists". Along with 30 editioned prints, the exhibition includes several pages from the limited edition book and a copy of the book itself, the latter with an edition of only 15. As the title states the images are concerned with the land and people of Australia.

The images range from comments on identity (eg. Cat.1, Craig Tuffin's Ngullingi Mala) through portraits (eg. Joyce Evans' William 'Lin' McClintock Onus AM (Cat.4) and the same artist's Rosemary Ryan, Artist – In Her Kitchen, Gleneagle, Victoria (Cat. 19)), and many images of the Australian landscape. The earliest images date from 1987 while the most recent are from 2017. The techniques employed by the artists are as various as the images and include platinum/palladian prints, silver gelatin prints, cyanotype prints, chryso type prints, casein prints and photogravure prints. There are some really beautiful photographs in the exhibition.

Stand outs for me include Cat. 3, Boabs in The Kimberly I by Kim Sinclair, Gordon Undy's Figments #12 (Cat. 5), Melrose Dusk (Cat. 11) by Steve Tester, and Julian Pearce's Tree Shadow, Carnavon National Park (Cat. 17). An extraordinary image and one neither of the land nor the people is Liam Lynch's Leafy Sea dragon Figure 4 'Phycodrus eques', Fleurieu Peninsula SA (Cat. 6). The subject is exquisite and the artist has captured its exotic appearance in a delightful image of nature's wonders. The Spirit Within Australia: The Land and the People is a significant project and a significant exhibition whose range and variety is photographically captivating and visually and thematically absorbing.

Artefact by Kim Sinclair is an exhibition of 10 images, five gold toned Vandyke prints and five cyanotypes. It is simple and beautiful. It is an exhibition that exhorts us to look at the things and places that constitute the paraphernalia of our quotidian lives.

In her use of early photographic techniques Sinclair takes a didactic stance and asks us to move away from the speedy techniques of much contemporary photographic practice.

The accompanying essay states that "she seeks to redress what she sees as the 'de-valuing the photograph as an object' that has occurred as a consequence of the digital photography movement".

The still lifes that constitute the exhibition hold a quiet beauty. The image of the dead gerberas in a vase (Cat. 3, Gerberas II) captures an unlikely elegance in the flowing movement of the drooping flowers over the full-bodied vase. 3 Pears (Cat. 1) is timeless in the choice of subject-matter. The 19th-century atmospheric aura that bathes the fruit posits in an attractive way the relevance of history for contemporary practice. Kangaroo Skull (Cat.8) is a very Australian memento mori that also speaks for historic relevance. I also like Reflecting Zen (Cat.9) in which the reverse of the Buddha's head is facing the viewer while he contemplates something we cannot see. This is a lovely exhibition and it, along with the other two current shows, continues to aver the vitality and depth of the exhibition program at PhotoAccess.