My students are having an exhibition of their Joiners projects, the photomontage technique developed by David Hockney in the 1980s. It’s a project I devised, along with Natalie Morawski, for the Photoimaging students at Melbourne Polytechnic.

It’s an informal exhibition made of class work rather than finished Diploma pieces, and is practice for the students in the process of exhibiting. It’s in our shiny new St John Street gallery at the Prahran campus

To make a Joiner you record your subject through close-up details in as many shots as you can manage. After printing them you try to re-assemble the subject by joining and overlapping the prints. Because each photo has its own viewpoint and perspective they don’t align perfectly so it’s like a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces don’t fit.

It challenges the natural instinct to make perfect, single, rectangular photographs – some of the Joiners on show contain 150 single shots and roam over the wall in a jagged patchwork.

The exhibition runs 12-5pm from Monday May 16 to Friday 20. The “opening” is on Thursday 19, 7 to 9pm. The gallery is in St John Street Prahran, ground floor building B, a hundred metres from Chapel St.

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