Facing Australia is a nationally acclaimed photographic project, working to engage remote, regional and metropolitan communities through a creative community engagement process. Facing Australia has grown to become one of Australia’s premier ongoing photographic projects.

Since 2002 thirty eight composite male and female portraits have been created. It began with The Face of Albury which was a finalist in the inaugural CitigroupPrivate Bank Australian Photographic Portrait Prize exhibited at the Art Gallery of NSW. In 2003 the project team were commissioned by the Brisbane City Council to create 8 faces of four very diverse Brisbane suburbs; Inala, St Lucia, Sunnybank Hills and Nudgee Beach. The final exhibition The Face of Brisbane formed a suite of exhibitions that opened the Museum of Brisbane in 2003.

Most recently the team traveled to the outback NSW town of Brewarrina and created four faces. Faces that represent one of Australia’s youngest and most indigenous communities.

Facing Australia creates composite male and female portraits based on current Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) census data. This census data is examined, establishing the proportionate age and ethnic profile of a chosen community. Individuals from the selected community are invited to participate by having their portrait taken. These images are carefully layered to create a composite portrait of the census-determined male and female.

Facing Australia puts a face to the numbers - a face to the place

Facing Australia is an ambitious project. It will create a series of faces representing remote, regional and metropolitan location from each of Australia’s states and territories. 48 male and female composite portraits will be created accompanied by thousands of individual portraits. Using the individual portraits stored on the data base two final images will be created: The Face of Australia.

Facing Australia can be seen as a key visual social document: contributing to the national archive so as to inform generations to come on who we were in the early part of the 21st century