PHOTO Australia invites local and international specialists to serve as Curatorial Advisors for each edition of the Festival. They review applications to the Open Call, and can nominate other artists for consideration for Outdoor Exhibitions.

 

Curatorial Advisors are also available for further consultation on the PHOTO 2026 program, ensuring the biennial is connected to the most exciting artistic practice and ideas from across Australia and around the world.

 

Read more about the PHOTO 2026 Open Call here.

 

Apply Now →

 

Lucy Gallun is Curator in the Department of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. In over 14 years at MoMA, Lucy has organized many exhibitions, the most recent being Life Dances On: Robert Frank in Dialogue (2024-25). She was co-editor and contributing author of Photography at MoMA, a three-volume history of photography at the Museum, and has contributed to numerous publications within and outside the Museum.

 

 

Clare Grafik is Head of Exhibitions at The Photographers’ Gallery in London. She has worked in public institutions including the ICA, Whitechapel, Hayward Gallery and National Portrait Gallery and with private collections. At TPG she has curated shows including Taryn Simon, Katy Grannan, Zineb Sedira, Keith Arnatt and Evelyn Hofer. Group projects include ‘The Photographic Object’, ‘Photography & Collage’ and ‘Double Take: Photography & Drawing’. Other projects include a solo exhibition with Bettina Von Zwehl at the Freud Museum and ‘Pictures from the Garden’ in collaboration with Photo Oxford in 2023. Contributions to books and catalogues include Alex Prager’s ‘Silver Lake Drive’ and, more recently, for ‘Another Country’ (T&H, 2022). She has been a Sessional Lecturer at Birkbeck College, London, and has lectured at institutions including University of the Arts, University of South Wales, and Sotheby’s Institute of Art.

 

 

Varun Gupta is a photographer for the last two decades, a serial entrepreneur and a lover of analogue and alternative photography practices who co-founded the Chennai Photo Biennale and the CPB Foundation, a non-profit organization that is focused on growing the photography community in India and South Asia. Varun serves as a collaborator and advisor to Photo Australia in Melbourne, and the Belfast Photo Festival in the UK and works closely with arts organisations across India. When not at his desk, he can be found in his darkroom experimenting with chemical processes and printmaking.

 

 

Shaune Lakin is Senior Curator, Photography at the National Gallery of Australia. Previous roles include Gallery Director, Monash Gallery of Art (now Museum of Australian Photography) and Senior Curator of Photography at the Australian War Memorial. Shaune’s curatorial projects are usually collaborative, often with colleague Anne O’Hehir, and tend to focus on the histories of feminist photography in Australia. Recent projects include work on the artists Olive Cotton, Peter Maloney and Carol Jerrems.

 

 

Brendan McCleary is a Curator at Photo Australia, Melbourne, recently presenting PHOTO 2024 International Festival of Photography, featuring artists including Nan Goldin, Ryan McGinley, Mous Lamrabat, and filip custic. In 2024, Brendan was the lead curator for Queer PHOTO, a celebration of Australian and international queer artists transforming streets and galleries with projects focused towards understandings of queer futures, featuring artists such as Sunil Gupta, Clifford Prince King, Salote Tawale, Jake Elwes, and Lilah Benetti. He has worked with artists such as Cindy Sherman, Martine Gutierrez, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Thandiwe Muriu, Mohamed Bourouissa and Vasantha Yogananthan at PHOTO 2022, and Zanele Muholi, Hoda Afshar, Brook Andrew and Maree Clarke at PHOTO 2021. For PHOTO 2022, he curated Queering the Frame: Community, Time, Photography at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne.

 

 

Clothilde Morette is Artistic Director of MEP (Maison Européenne de la Photographie), Paris. Her responsibilities include oversight of the exhibition and events programmes, as well as curatorial direction of The Studio: MEP’s exhibition space dedicated to emerging talent. Recent projects at MEP have included curating the major retrospective of artist Samuel Fosso; Rineke Dijkstra’s exhibition I See You; Viviane Sassen’s acclaimed solo show PhosPhor: Art and Fashion, and the collective exhibition Science/Fiction — A Non-History of Plants. She also taught contemporary photography at l’ECAL (Ecole d’Art Cantonal de Lausanne). She also practices independently as both a critic and curator, working between literary narratives and both historic and contemporary art. She is a founding editor of the forthcoming magazine LEONORA, which explores affinities between the short stories of Leonora Carrington and contemporary artistic practice.

 

 

Sophia Nampitjimpa Sambono is a Jingili woman with family connections from Elliot/Newcastle Waters to Darwin, Daly River and the Tiwi Islands. She is the Associate Curator, Indigenous Australian Art at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) where she has worked on a number of exhibitions including ‘Seeds and Sovereignty’ and the 10th and 11th Asia Pacific Triennales. Prior to QAGOMA Sophia curated exhibitions for kuril dhagun at the State Library of Queensland and as Curator of Indigenous Collections at the National Film and Sound Archive.

 

 

Mark Sealy is interested in the relationship between art, photography, social change, identity politics, race, and human rights. He gained his PhD from Durham University, England. He has written for many of the world’s leading photographic journals, produced numerous artist publications, curated exhibitions, and commissioned photographers and filmmakers worldwide. In addition, he is an advisor (management + committees) to several leading cultural institutions, including Tate, Paul Mellon Centre for the Studies in British Art, Art Fund, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, World Press Photo, and the International Centre of Photography in New York, USA. Lawrence and Wishart have published Sealy’s recent critical writings on photography. Photography: Race, Rights and Representation, published 2022 and Decolonising the Camera: Photography in Racial Time, published 2019. He is currently engaged as the Artistic Director for The Triennial of Photography Hamburg 2026.