Photosynthesisers: Women and the lens includes photographs and videos produced since the 1960s by women artists living in Aotearoa and Australia. As the title suggests, the exhibition is centred on the specific, transformative relationship between women and lens-based media, identifying an enduring, intergenerational regional history via the photographs and videos of artists from Aotearoa, Australia, and Moana Oceania.

Importantly, this does not revise and otherwise male-dominated lineage, but rather illustrates the world- and desire-building of diverse women artists and the undeniable social, political, and cultural ferment of their work. Embracing the metaphor of photosynthesis, the exhibition focuses on the enabling quality of the lens for capturing and transmuting sociopolitical energy, which has provided scope for necessarily divergent, intersecting, and generative worldviews. Spanning documentary, diaristic, and speculative modes, exhibited works address a wide range of issues including identity, care, trauma, reality, and politics.

The exhibition includes work by 40 artists including Edith Amituanai, Minerva Betts, Lauren Brincat, Fiona Clark, Margaret Dawson, Destiny Deacon, Bonita Ely, Helen Grace, Tracey Moffatt, Fiona Pardington, Lisa Reihana, Marie Shannon, and Salote Tawale, among others.