Meet the Artist: Ali McCann

Michaela Froehlich hopes her experience paves the way for women juggling motherhood and a scientific career in the future.

I am a Naarm/Melbourne-based photographic artist and educator currently working on a project that traverses photography, science, sci-fi and consciousness, with a focus on the search for dark matter at its core.

After attending a public lecture on dark matter by Professor Elisabetta Barberio at the University of Melbourne in 2016, I became fascinated by this area of scientific research. My interest was initially sparked by the site of the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory, located deep within the subterranean depths of an active gold mine in Western Victoria, almost directly underneath my childhood home.

Fast forward to 2024, and I’ve had the unique opportunity to create work at both the ARC Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics at the University of Melbourne and the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory. There, I’ve responded to the SABRE South experiment through various forms of photographic image-making, conceptual thinking, cross-disciplinary collaborations and ongoing dialogue with the scientific community.

In April and June of 2024, I made three visits to the ARC Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics research lab at the University of Melbourne, facilitated by Anita Vecchies, Jackie Bondell and Dr William Melbourne. Armed with various film cameras, custom-made backdrops, props and lighting equipment, I photographed various components and materials used in the construction of the SABRE South equipment, scientific instruments, and the surrounding laboratory environment.

I was later invited to participate in a trial artist engagement program by the Facility and Laboratory Manager Kim Mintern-Lane at the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory, with three artists connected to the area: Alasdair Niven, Khal Lawton and Mat Watson. During our two site visits underground, we worked alongside each other developing works in direct response to the lab environment.

In August, 2024 I also staged the exhibition, Return to Social at correspondences in Brunswick, which featured photographs inspired by vintage publications, specifically Time-Life Science Library Books in an exploration of pedagogy, science and the photographic object.[1] 

For 2025 International Day of Women and Girls in Science, I was invited to Bargoonga Nganjin, North Fitzroy Library, to speak alongside Jackie Bondell, Senior Education and Public Outreach Manager of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics to share our personal histories, career trajectories and respective areas of research and professional practice.  

From here, I will continue to work on the images captured in the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics, in my studio and darkroom, to further explore and experiment with film-based image-making techniques. This hands-on engagement has already sparked new creative and conceptual insights, and I now plan to reconnect with dark matter researchers and academics in the field to explore potential collaborations. By combining artistic practice with scientific inquiry, I am working towards the publication of a photo book and exhibition that delves deeper into the mysteries of dark matter and consciousness, fostering a cross-disciplinary dialogue that bridges art and science in unexpected ways.