Australians in PNG highlights the ongoing importance of Papua New Guinea as a subject in the history of Australian photography. Featuring major new bodies of work by Eric Bridgeman, Stephen Dupont and Sonia Payes, this suite of exhibitions, Eric Bridgeman: The fight, Stephen Dupont: Piksa Niugini and Sonia Payes: Terra mysteria acknowledges the complexity and significance of Australia’s involvement with its closest neighbour.

Sonia Payes (1956–) is a Melbourne-based artist. Payes’ art practice is grounded in her training as a photographer, which includes a Master Photographer qualification from the Australian Institute of Professional Photography (2001). She has been exhibiting her work since the mid-1990s, and has regularly staged solo exhibitions in art galleries since 2003. Payes is well known for her photographic portraits of artists and other public figures, but her creative work has increasingly focused on the landscape as a subject. Payes is an avid traveller, and takes particular inspiration from terrains that have extreme geological and atmospheric conditions.