Michaela Gleave
33° 54′ 0.17″ S, 151° 14′ 8.80″ E, 590nm (White) 1-3
2025
Infrared photograph, glicee print on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Metallic, handmade frame with mirror spacers
80 x 120 cm
‘33° 54′ 0.17″ S, 151° 14′ 8.80″ E, 590nm (White)’ 1–3 documents Centennial Park’s grey-headed flying-fox colony in 590nm infrared. Captured using a full-spectrum converted camera, the foliage in these images flares ghostly white — chlorophyll reflecting infrared light in a way akin to visible light on snow. Looking up into the canopy, the delicate white forms of the branches appear almost lace-like, while the semi-abstracted bats hang like black jewels in negative space.
Set within a constructed colonial landscape on unceded Gadigal land, the work traces the ecological afterlives of empire — a transplanted parkland where introduced species thrive, and native ecologies persist at the edges. Infrared photography reveals what lies outside the visible spectrum, offering a counter-vision that makes the natural world strange again — a spectral tool for unsettling the familiar and re-encountering place.
This series continues Michaela Gleave’s broader exploration of the peripheries of human knowledge and perception, using scientific and poetic methodologies to open portals onto entangled systems — ecological, cosmological, and colonial.