AS part of the PHOTO 2024 International Festival of Photography, Benalla Art Gallery is presenting two of its official exhibitions: Scotty So’s +50 in the Bennett Gallery, and Laresa Kosloff’s New Futures in the Simpson Gallery.

Scotty So: +50 will run until May 5 and Laresa Kosloff: New Futures will run until April 28.

Benalla Art Gallery director Eric Nash said these were important events in the gallery’s calendar, which began in March as part of this year's festival.

He said working with the photo media artists, Scotty So and Laresa Kosloff, was an honour.

So is a Melbourne-based artist who works across media, using painting, photography, sculptures, site responsive installation, videos and drag performance.

His exhibition +50 explores the perspectives and aspirations of young people from diverse backgrounds in Benalla and Melbourne.

Participants share their thoughts on how they and the world will change in the next 50 years and their responses feature as a soundscape within the exhibition, surrounded by photographic portraits of the sitters, which So has propelled 50 years into the future through the use of AI technologies.

Kosloff makes performative videos, Super 8 films, hand-drawn animations, sculpture, installations and live performance works.

Her practice examines various representational strategies, each one linked by an interest in the body and its agency within the everyday.

New Futures brings together two darkly humorous video artworks assembled and edited entirely from corporate video stock footage sourced on the internet, each exploring themes of duplicity, neoliberalism and the climate crisis.

“Through our participation in the PHOTO 2022 festival, we know there is a strong appetite for high quality and thought-provoking photographic exhibitions locally, and that many visitors travel to Benalla specifically to enjoy the exhibitions," Mr Nash said.

"In 2022, we recorded over 7000 exhibition visitors, with 19 per cent of those guests from interstate and a further 59 per cent from elsewhere in the state.

"These visitors spent an average of 2.2 nights in Benalla, injecting over $250 each into the local economy."