Australian photographer Geoff Brokate has travelled widely, documenting the lives of the people he has encountered. Best known for his portraits of Pakistani women, Brokate’s work has been published and exhibited internationally. Now living in the North West, he has turned his camera on the English landscape, creating a series of mysterious and inspiring visual poems.

Geoff Brokate adds: "I choose to be specific with my framing, simplifying until there's nothing left in the photograph apart from the subject. That helps me to become more intimate with the experience of seeing - whatever it is; a shaft of light; a reflection... and I find I can appreciate it more. The act of looking for simplicity is a meditation, a reminder that my relationship to the landscape is immediate. I find that as I pare things down a mystery is revealed that mirrors my own inner simplicity. I become less demanding that the world be spectacular. I am happy just to be here and to allow the world to be exactly as it is. In the intimacy of those moments I sense the majesty in the overlooked, something that goes beyond macrocosm and microcosm to a place where everything is part of the same constant unfolding.

"I use film because we all have a nostalgic connection with it and that naturally creates a reflective state of mind when approaching the images. The diminutive size requires that the viewer move closer, recreating their own moments of intimacy.

"Something happens when I arrange the photographs together that makes them more organic, just like water flows. The way they interact with each other is reminiscent of the way neighbouring countries sit side by side, both reflecting and rejecting each other. Or like the juxtaposed yet interweaving lines of a haiku poem. The collections invite the viewer to create their own landscape of stories, connection and poetry."

Members of the public are invited to attend an informal launch of Geoff Brokate’s new exhibition, in the bar from 18:00 – 20:00 on Thursday 9 January.