Nur Aishah Kenton & Shelley Xue — Returning
4 September, 2026 — 4 October 2026
Shelley Xue, Returning, 2026
Returning considers the act of revisiting one’s motherland, where the notion of home is shaped by both continuity and change. To return as an adult is to encounter landscapes, places, and relationships that carry the resonance of childhood, yet feel creased by the passage of time.
Returning to where they grew up in Malaysia and China respectively, Nur Aishah Kenton and Shelley Xue reflect on how both place and self have changed over time. Revisiting familiar paths, people and memories, they seek to understand what endures and what now feels far removed from once remembered. The resulting works trace the shifting boundaries between familiarity and distance, recognition and estrangement. In doing so, the photographs become vessels for remembering, questioning and witnessing, where past and present briefly meet before drifting apart once more.
Rather than offering a singular notion of homecoming for both artists, Returning embraces the uncertainty of return itself from two separate viewpoints, although both share unspoken similarities. The photographic work lives as a site of negotiation between what is recalled, observed, and what inevitably slips away. In these moments, returning is revealed not as an arrival, but as an ongoing act of recognising and finding oneself anew.
What does returning signify for you?
Nur Aishah Kenton & Shelley Xue, Returning, 2026
Artist Bios
Nur Aishah Abdullah Farid Kenton is a Singapore-born, Malay-Australian photographer, artist, and educator whose practice is grounded in collaboration and community engagement.
Working across photography, archival materials, and installation, Aishah uses participatory methods to create spaces for dialogue, shared authorship, and collective storytelling. Her work often brings people together through workshops, co-creation, and long-form projects that centre lived experience. Blending conceptual and documentary approaches, she explores how art can foster connection, exchange, and social engagement.
Aishah’s practice has garnered recognition through numerous grants, commissions, and awards, and she has exhibited both in Australia and internationally. She was a finalist in the National Portrait Prize (2024 and 2025), the William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize (2025), Australian Life (2024), and the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award. Her work has also been acknowledged internationally, with nominations for the World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass (2025), Magnum Photos Lab (2022), and the British Journal of Photography’s Ones to Watch (2022).
Aishah grew up in Kuala Lumpur and is an alumni of the Australian National University in Canberra with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (2018), where she majored in photography at the School of Art and Design and graduated with an Emerging Artist Award in collaboration with Goulburn Regional Art Gallery.
Aishah is one half of KENTON/DAVEY and co-director of Pacific Centre for Photographic Arts.
Shelley Xue is a Naarm/Melbourne-based arts worker, artist and photographer from Guangdong, China.
Her practice engages photography, personal objects, family archives as ways of remembering, reconnecting, and reflecting on family/home. Working with memory and lived experience, she seeks to make up for lost time while exploring themes of grief, belonging, and intimacy.
Through creative making, she builds an archive that preserves the tenderness and layered complexity of family relationships, opening space for new connections and shared stories. Shelley won the 2024 National Photographic Portrait Prize Art Handlers’ Award for her work 阿谊 (Ah Yi).