The Edge Screens: Echoes of Brisbane

Step into the world of Echoes of Brisbane, a new exhibition by Moreton Bay-based multidisciplinary artist Pia Robinson. 

For over a decade, Pia has called South East Queensland home, creating and showcasing her work across the state and beyond. Her art is a deeply personal form of expression, exploring themes of memory, connection, loss, and the interplay between the built and natural environments.

In Echoes of Brisbane, Pia revisits a body of work she began in 2006. Using a disused architectural camera and traditional black-and-white photographic film, she captured fleeting moments of Brisbane’s urban landscape, echoes of light and place frozen in time. Now, two decades later, she has reimagined these static images as moving artworks, blending analogue photography with contemporary digital techniques. The result is a mesmerising fusion of photography and cinema that reanimates Brisbane’s past in a way that feels both nostalgic and new.

This exhibition is a reflection of Pia’s artistic journey, one that has evolved alongside her personal life. After a period of focusing on motherhood and overcoming cancer, Pia has returned to her practice with renewed energy, creating works that inspire connection and community.

Don’t miss this captivating exhibition at The Edge Screens, running from 1 July to 17 August. Whether you’re a long-time admirer of Pia’s work or new to her art, Echoes of Brisbane is an experience that will leave a lasting impression.

Mark your calendars and join us in celebrating the art of storytelling through memory, light, and movement.

Event Details:

• Exhibition: Echoes of Brisbane by Pia Robinson
• Location: The Edge Screens
• Dates: 1 July – 17 August

This work is presented as part of State Library of Queensland's Brisbane Open House program for 2026.

We sat down with Pia Robinson to ask her about her practice, and the motivation behind the work. 

Are you about to talk through your practice?

My life seems to unfold in decades. Ten years ago, I became a mother, and in that same year I was diagnosed with cancer. Both were pivotal moments that profoundly shifted my perspective on what really matters in life. My attention was naturally drawn outward, towards caring for others, family, community, and simply surviving. Around that same period, Instagram emerged and transformed photography as both an art form and a tool for documentation, changing the way we create, share, and consume images.

Now, another decade on, life is shifting once again. Alongside these personal changes has come a strong pull back to my own art practice. While this return is deeply personal, it has also created space to reflect on our relationship with technology, process, authenticity, perspective, and memory.

Since graduating from the Queensland College of Art, I have found immense joy and purpose in enabling others through creative practice, leadership, and community. Making has always remained a constant in my life, even when my own artistic practice took a quieter form. In recent years, however, I have felt drawn back to creating work for myself as a way to process and make sense of what is happening in the world around us.

My practice is grounded in observation, memory, and place. Through photography and moving image, I explore the layers of meaning embedded within everyday environments, inviting moments of reflection, connection, and wonder. Returning to my art practice has been both humbling and vulnerable, requiring me to place my artwork into the world once again. Yet it has also been a reminder of the power of art to make sense of change, preserve memory, and create space for us to reflect on our shared human experience.

I was recently awarded a Regional Arts Development Fund (RADF) grant to revisit this body of work under the mentorship of local animator Helena Papageorgiou. Echoes of Brisbane is the result of that process, transforming an archival photographic series into a moving-image installation that reflects on memory, place, and the changing nature of the city.

What was the original motivation behind capturing these images?

I started this series of works in 2006 during my time at the Queensland College of Art, where I studied photography as an elective as part of my Bachelor of Fine Art degree. I had always been drawn to photography and used it as a creative outlet from a young age. This was before digital photography and hand-held devices became dominant, when we worked almost exclusively with film (which makes me sound very old!). Yet despite all the technological advances since then, Instagram has never been able to replace the beauty of film.

I wanted to capture Brisbane as it was through black-and-white film, focusing on my favourite architectural structures and the striking contrasts that film photography creates. I spent hours walking the streets of Brisbane, waiting for the right light and the right time of day.

I grew up surrounded by architecture, which naturally led to an appreciation of the forms and structures of our city. I was also interested in capturing the pedestrian experience of Brisbane CBD, moments such as the feeling of walking through a rainforest-like streetscape, seeing dappled light reflected from glass building across structures.

For me, film photography paints with light, creating echoes of time and place. Nothing is ever quite the same; the only constant is change.

To accompany this series, I also developed a number of light boxes that further explored these ideas of light, memory, and urban experience.

Can you talk about the experience of curating together the images you are displaying on the screens? How did you choose what was included in Echoes of Brisbane?

There are over 100 images of Brisbane in this series. As I reviewed the collection, I selected a group of key images that could work together as a triptych across the three screens. This involved balancing landscape and portrait compositions and considering how the images would relate to one another when viewed simultaneously.

The sequence begins in the inner city and gradually moves outward through what was once the industrial ring surrounding the CBD, then into the suburbs and finally to the port. The work traverses from the city's core to its edges, slowly revealing and unpeeling the different layers that make up Brisbane.

Many of these photographs had been sitting in a box for years, waiting for me to return to them. The process of developing Echoes of Brisbane became an opportunity to revisit the archive, reflect on how the city has changed, and bring together images that create a sense of movement, memory, and place.

What photographic processes did you use in these images? 

I grew up in a family of architects, and as digital technology increasingly shaped architectural practice, many analogue cameras became redundant. I inherited a couple of disused cameras from an architectural office, and that's really where my photographic journey began.

In 2005, I travelled to New York and experienced the city with fresh eyes. I love the feeling of encountering a place for the first time and trying to capture what makes it unique. During that trip, I shot a few rolls of black-and-white film and some Polaroids.

When I returned home and processed the film, I discovered that some of the rolls hadn't wound on properly. The result was a series of accidental multiple exposures that created cinematic strips of time and place, almost like painting with light. The other images were moody and grainy, qualities that I love about black-and-white film. They captured subtle variations in light that, to me, made the urban environment feel almost like a rainforest. There's a depth, texture, and atmosphere to analogue photography that continues to resonate with me.

The original Brisbane photographs were made in 2006 using black-and-white film. I didn't use multiple exposure when taking these photos. However, the idea of multiple exposure has become part of the work through its transformation into a moving-image installation. Layers of photographs dissolve and transition into one another, creating overlapping moments and perspectives that echo the effects of multiple exposure and suggest the accumulation of memory over time.

What do you hope that people experience while viewing the work?

I hope people experience a renewed appreciation for the beauty of what already exists around them. Brisbane is often viewed as a city in transition, constantly evolving, but within that change there are moments of quiet wonder that can easily be overlooked.

The work invites viewers to slow down and spend time with the city, noticing its forms, textures, light, and atmosphere. The photographs capture places that may be familiar, but present them in a way that encourages reflection and rediscovery.

For me, the work is also about the relationship between change and memory. The only constant is change, yet nostalgia helps shape our sense of identity and belonging. As Brisbane continues to transform, these images become both a record of a particular moment in time and a reminder of the layers of history, experience, and memory that underpin not only the city we know today, but also our shared human experience.