Abstract
The group exhibition Temporary presents photographs from three social research projects – Kaya Barry’s Seasonal focuses on migrant farm workers in Queensland; Together Apart by Matt Withers, Kirstie Petrou & Jeanette Tanghwa considers the social impacts on workers’ families back home; and
Ema Moolchand’s Seeing The Whole Picture explores the pressures and challenges faced by workers in meat and cleaning jobs.
The subtitle for this exhibition, We Wanted Workers But We Got People, is a famous quote from Swiss novelist Max Frisch criticising the overly economistic focus of Europe’s post-World War Two guestworker schemes. Like Frisch, the three projects exhibited here aim to highlight the human side of labour mobility schemes. The workers this exhibition focuses on – those on the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) visa – like other guestworkers before them, are much more than just workers.
The photographs were captured by the workers themselves or by their family members, using cameras supplied by the researchers or their own phones and devices. Viewed together, these three distinct projects tell an overarching story of the experience of coming to Australia as a temporary worker on the PALM scheme - through snapshots of their day-to-day lives,
their workplaces, shared accommodation, and friendships – and of the impacts of these experiences on workers’ family members and communities back home.
Employed in industries such as food production, cleaning, and aged care, which are simultaneously essential and devalued as ‘low-’ or ‘unskilled’, workers on the PALM visa are often hidden from sight. We rarely see the lives and experiences of these people. The exhibition Temporary invites you into the worlds of these communities as seen through their own eyes.
Ema Moolchand’s Seeing The Whole Picture explores the pressures and challenges faced by workers in meat and cleaning jobs.
The subtitle for this exhibition, We Wanted Workers But We Got People, is a famous quote from Swiss novelist Max Frisch criticising the overly economistic focus of Europe’s post-World War Two guestworker schemes. Like Frisch, the three projects exhibited here aim to highlight the human side of labour mobility schemes. The workers this exhibition focuses on – those on the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) visa – like other guestworkers before them, are much more than just workers.
The photographs were captured by the workers themselves or by their family members, using cameras supplied by the researchers or their own phones and devices. Viewed together, these three distinct projects tell an overarching story of the experience of coming to Australia as a temporary worker on the PALM scheme - through snapshots of their day-to-day lives,
their workplaces, shared accommodation, and friendships – and of the impacts of these experiences on workers’ family members and communities back home.
Employed in industries such as food production, cleaning, and aged care, which are simultaneously essential and devalued as ‘low-’ or ‘unskilled’, workers on the PALM visa are often hidden from sight. We rarely see the lives and experiences of these people. The exhibition Temporary invites you into the worlds of these communities as seen through their own eyes.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Australian National University |
| Publication status | Published - 13 Mar 2025 |