Kathleen Bleakley

Lightseekers Kathleen Bleakley

Kathleen Miriam Bleakley was born before breakfast. She was delivered by her Grandad - Dr John Martin - in a room awash with Moroccan light. The first sentence she uttered was more sish singers. Her fish-like love of swimming can be traced to lighthouse keeper ancestry. When Kathleen moved to Wollongong, she navigated her way around town and university, keeping the big lighthouse in sight. Living in Sweden, Kathleen missed bright Australian skies yet embraced candle-lit days followed eventually by the midnight sun. According to the stars, she's a moon child. Kathleen loves the moon's many shades, and collaborating with 'pling, in distilling and shaping images, moments, places, memories and dreams.
'pling has been working with light for over 35 years, entering the darkroom in his university days and being drawn back into it through contemporary performance photography over the last 20 years. His photography is biased toward contemporary music, theatre and other performance, but he has been known to get distracted by anything from buildings to desert. 'pling has had close artistic collaborations with numerous contemporary performance practitioners, most notably with Janine Ayres, Joe Woodward and the late David Branson. His work has been published in Muse, artlook, The Canberra Times, Lowdown, Real Time and other publications including theatre posters, programs & exhibitions including 3 Canberra Centenary exhibitions; his images have been used by the National Film and Sound Archive.