2022 National Works on Paper by MPRG

NATIONAL WORKS ON PAPER 2022

MORNINGTON PENINSULA REGIONAL GALLERY

Mornington Peninsula Shire acknowledges and pays respect to the Bunurong / BoonWurrung people, the traditional custodians of these lands and waters. WARNING: This publication contains names and images of deceased Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

NATIONAL WORKS ON PAPER Contents

Mayor's Welcome: Anthony Marsh

Mornington Peninsula Shire Mayor Introduction: Danny Lacy

The WORKS 04

Gallery Director, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery

Foreword: Jenna Lee Artist, designer, NWOP 2020 finalist, NWOP 2022 judge

08 Essay: Paper: A field of view

Penelope Gebhardt Independent curator

The Works

2022

Mayor's Welcome:

Anthony Marsh Mornington Peninsula Shire Mayor

Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery’s National Works on Paper (NWOP) is one of the foremost art awards and exhibitions in the country, attracting Australia’s leading contemporary artists working with paper. Evolving out of the gallery’s Spring Festival of Drawing and Prints Acquisitive prizes, which began in 1973 and 1974 respectively, NWOP presents a survey of contemporary art-making, celebrating the medium of paper in all its different forms. 2

Close to 900 artists from across Australia submitted entries for NWOP 2022, with 78 finalists selected by the judging panel of Clothilde Bullen, Head of Indigenous Programs and Curator, Art Gallery of Western Australia; Max Delany, Artistic Director and CEO, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art; Jenna Lee, artist, designer and NWOP finalist in 2020 and Danny Lacy, Director, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery. The finalists’ works capture the inexhaustible malleability of paper and how artists use and transform it, pushing and pulling the medium to its limits. The Mornington Peninsula Shire is proud to provide funding for NWOP, including the main acquisitive award of $20,000, and we thank the Friends of Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery for their continued patronage, and the Ursula Hoff Foundation for supporting the Ursula Hoff Institute Emerging Artist Acquisitive award. Congratulations to all the finalists, who inspire us with their creativity and unique perspective of the world, and the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery team for delivering this wonderful exhibition. 3

Introduction:

Danny Lacy Gallery Director, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery

National Works on Paper (NWOP) is a project that continues to refine and evolve. Building on our previous awards, Spring Festival of Drawing and Prints Acquisitive, NWOP was established back in 1998 with the aim of ‘providing a survey of what’s happening in art across Australia today’ while ‘supporting and promoting contemporary Australian artists working on or with paper’. 4

NWOP is an award, a curated exhibition, a celebration of the materiality of paper, a showcase of the ambition and experimentation of artists, and a conduit for us to build our collection. We love presenting NWOP every two years and highlighting the amazing work that artists are making across the country. Thank you to the judges this year, an expanded judging panel including Clothilde Bullen, Max Delany and Jenna Lee. With so many fantastic applications, the selection of the finalists was full of robust and hearty discussion, and I value and respect the insights and input from the panel in crafting our list of 78 finalists. I would like to thank the MPRG team for their professionalism and hard work in delivering this key project, in particular, MPRG Registrar Angie Taylor who coordinated the administration and logistics of the entire project and NWOP intern Lachie Petrie for his attention to detail, insight and support and Narelle Russo, Rowena Wiseman and Jane German. Thank you to Jenna Lee and Penelope Gebhardt for their illuminating texts that add unique context and perspective, the team at Alter for the design of our fresh new NWOP branding and publication, Vanessa Pellatt and Nicky Klempfner for editing and proofreading, and our amazing install crew: Sunny Scott, Marni Howard and Paul Nuttney at ExhibitOne. We thank the ongoing support of the Mornington Peninsula Shire, the Friends of MPRG and the Ursula Hoff Foundation for enabling NWOP to be at the forefront of Australian art prizes with a focus on paper. Its ongoing success depends on the continued investment from our wonderful supporters. 5

Foreword:

Jenna Lee Artist, designer, NWOP 2020 finalist, NWOP 2022 judge

Paper has always been an integral part of my creativity. From a very young age, making art with paper began before breakfast. I would wake my mum up and, to have a quiet moment, she would sit me down with various forms of paper-craft activities to keep me busy. Some of my earliest and most treasured memories are of handmade recycled paper, potato-stamp Christmas wrapping, papier-mâché, decoupage and origami at the kitchen table. 6

This is what I believe paper can do – its materiality and tactility can evoke memories. These memories might not be as craft-centred as my own, but there is something in the smell of a beloved old book, the feel of a paper travel stub, or the importance we place on that one folder in that one cupboard, which contains all the documents we deem important. It was through my own collection of memories and my experience with paper that I was led to work with it as my primary medium as a practicing artist. Both my childhood and formal training as a print-based graphic designer gave me a foundation to understand the material qualities of paper. This understanding grew into a passion driving me to make art, which has ultimately led to now, and what I can only describe as an obsession that has bled into art, craft, collecting and researching. Outside the white walls of a gallery, paper is a part of our everyday lives, and it’s that almost mundane, everyday quality that I find the most special. When artists work with paper as their subject, material, and medium there is a transformation that happens. We take an accessible, common, almost universal substance and through our interactions and interventions with its surface, reveal and elevate its beauty. Here in National Works on Paper (NWOP) at the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, this transformation and elevation of paper takes centre stage. Being asked to judge a paper prize is an honour and an incredible opportunity to sit with paper, to think deeply about paper and talk about paper with the other judges. The resulting show is a collection of phenomenal artists who have also sat with paper, thought about paper, and created with or on paper. The finalists' works in 2022 NWOP showcase the stunning breadth of possibility and some of the most breathtaking uses of paper I have ever seen. This exhibition provides a deep well of inspiration and I hope all who visit walk away loving paper even a fraction as much as I do. 7

Essay:

Paper: A field of view

Penelope Gebhardt Independent curator

Since the 2020 National Works on Paper (NWOP) exhibition, we have witnessed a time of great political, humanitarian, economic and ecological upheaval. The 2022 exhibition sees the work of seventy-eight finalists coalesce in an incisive expression of this moment from the quotidian to the universal. Reaching and roving across far-ranging histories, cultures, conceptual ideas, materiality and geographies, this selection of works shares not only distinction in the paper medium, but collective resonant themes of transformation and relationality. 8

Paper has memory. Traces of its history live within its fibres and form part of its narrative. Impressions are revealed in visible, tactile, aural and olfactory ways, engaging our senses as it imparts the stories written in its skin. Lucienne Rickard and Emma Fielden use processes of change to elucidate their ideas. In Fold, Rickard crouched on the floor of her studio, labouring with a large-scale sheet of paper for an eight-hour duration. Rickard felt the experience in her body for days afterwards, with an aching back, sore thumbs, dry skin, and a bruised heel-of-palm1. Fold is a record of experience – the paper has transcended its smooth, pristine beginnings to capture an expression of endurance in a beautiful humming architecture, where networks of linear geometrics undulate, shadows shift, and edges are softly worn. In her work Confluence, Fielden captures the after-effects of mutually transforming materials by placing two blank sheets of paper side by side and pouring ink onto them. As the ink dries, the materials interact, shifting and shaping as they alter each other irrevocably. Several artists in this year’s exhibition investigate the inherent nature of paper as they purpose it in three-dimensional forms, including Sherna Teperson in a paper construction and Ngilan Margaret Dodd in a woven work. Teperson’s piece Air (breathing spell) focuses quiet attention on slowing down. A network of diminished octahedrons cluster like molecules, the building blocks of material phenomena – a cloud, interior spaces of the body, frog spawn. The palette and repetition of pattern slow the eye and invite contemplation. Ngilan Margaret Dodd is a Tjanpi Desert Weaver living in the Mimili Community on the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands. In her work ngayuku walka (my mark) Dodd preserves milpatjunanyi2, the making of marks in the sand to tell stories. With the wire she used as a girl to draw, Dodd has shaped the marks of story, around which she has woven paper to create a series of textural gestures. The artist states: ‘I’ve come around full circle, using paper and wire to hold my stories for the grandchildren, for everyone to see my drawings and song.’3 Paper is synonymous with record keeping and documentation. In their respective practices Robert Fielding and Glennys Briggs source material from institutional archives to examine memories and histories of colonisation. In AIM, Robert Fielding, of Western Arrernte and Yankunytjatjara descent, appropriates the format of Australian Inland Mission (AIM) posters that were published by the Christian Church in the mid-1900s. By referencing these posters, Fielding investigates the role of paper in the state and institutional deracination of Aboriginal people. Fielding’s father was taken from his family on the APY Lands in the mid-1900s. 9

The artist says: ‘This work is a process of unlocking his story, of restoring traumas and truths of the past and repairing the present.’4 Glennys Briggs is a Taungwurrung-Yorta Yorta woman and multi-disciplinary artist. In her collagraph titled WHY an historic photograph is reproduced, depicting a group of Aboriginal men shackled at the neck. This brutal practice was sanctioned by the state and continued in some areas into the 1960s. The image is dominated by the artist’s central proposition: WHY. The question hangs unanswered, implicating the historical and ongoing violence and racial injustices of the colonial project. The ecological crisis surfaces in many works. Kate GorringeSmith’s sculptural installation is framed by the rhetorical title: How do you sleep at night? A provocation to people in positions of power who have failed to take decisive action against climate change, as well as those who benefit from the spoils of extractive processes in everyday life. Measuring the weeks in a year, fiftytwo paper pillows lie in rough rows, each marked variously by fire, water, earth and air. These elemental traces speak of the Earth’s growing climate instability that is increasingly expressed through the ecological trauma of bushfire, drought, storm and flood. Meanwhile, Philip Faulks’ drawing Rise and Fall references a dramatic childhood memory of a jet fighter crashing into a field behind his house in England. A tight formation of fighter planes rush against a dark sky, the aircraft closely infilled with patterns of life: writhing worms, creeping fingers, eyeballs, creatures, trees, built environments, feathers. Some aircraft are on the rise, but most are nosediving, symbolically bearing fragments of the living world to destruction. Faulks suggests that while Western thinking has produced some remarkable achievements, it remains critically, and perhaps fatally, flawed. Jon Campbell and Anna Hoyle critique late capitalist consumer culture in their text-based works. In a series of vibrant gouache and acrylic paintings, Hoyle pokes fun at the wellness industry, advertising, and green washing as well as the relentless emphasis on labour and productivity. In a zesty mashup of aestheticised contemporary slang and subverted advertising witticisms, a circus of cute, personified protuberances – lips, digestive systems, breasts and phalluses – parade and contort. In Greedy, Campbell has painted the title of the work over a fluorescent De La Soul poster he collaged in the early 1990s. The text is somewhat distorted, much like the effects of neoliberalism on the global social and economic fabric.

Glen Namundja, from Gunbalanya/Oenpelli, and Gloria Gavenor, from Mornington Island/Kunhanhaa, create paintings layered with cultural stories. Namundja’s rarrk (cross hatch) and ochre painting Yingarna is a major work in its scale, intensity and artistry, combining several Creation Time stories from western Arnhem Land featuring Yingarna, the creation mother. Namundja is widely recognised for his artistic skill and knowledge of the old stories. In a mode of celebration, Gloria Gavenor’s painting Wallabies’ Party sees a mob of the creatures in silhouette, bounding playfully in a colourful disco. Wallabies of all shapes and sizes dance, arms in motion as they move up and down to the party beat. Gavenor honors the karnjil (wallaby) who is hunted throughout most of the year and provides sustenance to the old people.5 In his practice, Barkindji man Kent Morris interweaves elements of the built environment into the continuum of Indigenous culture. In the giclee print Barkindji Blue Sky – Ancestral Connections #9 a sequence of kiinki6 (corellas) spread their wings, while dissected imagery of telecommunications hardware hovers in perfect symmetry above. The elements of the source image are (re)formed and (re)placed. In Morris’s words this provides: ‘a fleeting but empowering sovereign moment amongst the day-to-day interventions and absences of truth and equity regarding First Nations histories, knowledges and lived experiences.’7 The birds and technology synthesise, creating a sense of awe as they soar as one in the brilliant firmament. The artworks discussed here are a fraction of the seventy-eight in this remarkable exhibition, exemplifying the strength and agility of artists creating work at this time. By offering up stories and pathways, ideas and lifeways, the works reveal unique perspectives of the world and ways of being. Perhaps like the paper we see transformed through diverse and innovative processes, we may be transformed in some large or small way by our encounters with them.

Notes

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Email correspondence with Lucienne Rickard, 6 June 2022. Artist statement, Ngilan Margaret Dodd, NWOP 2022. Artist statement, Ngilan Margaret Dodd, NWOP 2022. Artist statement, Robert Fielding, NWOP 2022. Artist statement, Gloria Gavenor, NWOP 2022. Artist statement, Kent Morris, NWOP 2022. Email correspondence with Kent Morris, 7 June 2022. 11

2022 National Works On Paper A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery Exhibition 13 August – 27 November 2022

2022 NWOP Judges: Clothilde Bullen, Head of Indigenous Programs and Curator, AGWA Max Delany, Artistic Director and CEO, ACCA Jenna Lee, Artist, NWOP finalist 2020 Danny Lacy, Gallery Director, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery NWOP Co-ordinating Registrar: Angie Taylor NWOP Intern: Lachlan Petrie Collections Curator: Narelle Russo Project Officer: Celia Mallard Registrar: Ainsley Gowing Marketing and Publication Coordinator: Rowena Wiseman Visitor Operations & Gallery Support: Elisabeth Jones Public Programs Coordinator: Jane German Education Officer: Jill Anderson

ISBN: 978-0-6455509-0-0

Exhibition Support: Marni Howard, Sunny Scott, Paul Nuttney (Exhibitone)

Edition: 2022 Design: Alter Print run: 500 Printing: IVE © The authors and Mornington Peninsula Shire, 2022 12

All artwork titles are printed as submitted by the artists. All photos have been provided by the artists unless otherwise stated. Authorised by Manager, Community Activation, Mornington Peninsula Shire.

NATIONAL WORKS ON PAPER The WORKS 2022

PETER ATKINS b. 1963, Murrurundi, New South Wales. Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

Closing Down/All Stock Must Go/Crazy Prices/ Nothing Over $40 (excludes Jackets) 2022 digital print on paper 61.0 x 43.0 cm each (quadriptych) Represented by Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne 14

During the latter stages of the pandemic in 2021, I noticed many retail stores closing down along Sydney Road in my neighbourhood of Brunswick. The forms used in this artwork were appropriated from various sale signs I saw plastered across many of these shopfront windows. I’ve attempted to replicate this repetitive effect by printing the same artwork four times, aligning them to the process used to endlessly mass-produce the original sale signs. Each artwork has a title that relates specifically to these sale signs: Closing Down, All Stock Must Go, Crazy Prices, Nothing Over $40 (excludes Jackets). These titles act as a record, a social document that hints at the broader underlying narrative associated with this particularly devastating moment in history. The impacts of which are still to be felt as they ripple out through the wider community.

GRAHAM BADARI b. 1963, Gunbalanya, Northern Territory. Language group: Kunwinjku. Lives and works in Gunbalanya, Northern Territory

Namarrkon (Lightning Man) 2021 ochre, acrylic on Arches® paper 61.0 x 41.0 cm Injalak Arts – Gunbalanya, Northern Territory

Graham Badari is a senior artist working at Injalak Arts in Gunbalanya. He paints using natural earth pigments and in the traditional rock art style that can be seen adorning shelters all over western Arnhem Land. Namarrkon the Lightning Man is a significant Creation Ancestor for the Kunwinjku people of western Arnhem Land. Namarrkon helped create the country during the Dreamtime. He throws stone axes down onto the earth, causing thunder and lightning, which can be aimed at those people who disobey the traditional laws. These axes can be seen protruding from various parts of his body, particularly the joints. An arc of lightning encircles his body. Namarrkon is particularly active during December, when the season of kunumeleng is characterised by spectacular pre-monsoon storms, and then from January to March during kudjewk, the ‘wet’ season in northern Australia.

ELIZABETH BANFIELD b. 1963, Chadwell St Mary, United Kingdom; arr. Australia 1966. Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

lacuna (letter 18) 2020 linocut artist book, kozo tissue, thread, solander box enclosure 25.5 x 25.5 x 1.5 cm; 28.0 x 28.0 x 4.0 cm (box)

In my current practice I make fine line linocuts using Japanese tissue papers. I like the inherent symbolism in this strong yet seemingly delicate and ephemeral paper traditionally used for repair and protection. The tissue also facilitates colour mixing and layering, and in an artist book allows for printing and viewing from both sides. Correspondence is a theme I often return to; prints become letters that cannot be written or sent in any other way. With this book I am investigating the idea of a lacuna – a gap in a manuscript, a missing portion of a story. The finely carved abstract text creates background tone and the spaces between become the shadow of a tree as it falls. Progression through the pages of the book makes each section of the tree stand again. Making prints, books and boxes is a meditative process: an attempt to mend, remember and record.

KATHRYN BLUMKE b. 1966, Brisbane, Queensland. Lives and works in Brisbane, Queensland

Water Quilt 2021 watercolour, graphite, pencil 63.0 x 360.0 cm

Water Quilt explores narratives of quilt making, abstraction and painting as a feminist strategy. It investigates the philosophical concept of Deleuzian affect, the processes of becoming a butterfly, and transformation and healing. It explores affects of healing after the passing of my sister-in-law. Methods included my walking along the water and observing butterflies. I consider the nonrepresentational aspect of abstraction including affect and materiality as a pathway, in what Elizabeth Grosz calls expressing something within ‘oneself’ as a feminist strategy. It also has its foundation in ideas of becoming, differentiation, intensities and flows, invisible forces, and affirmation as a feminist strategy. I make links with the drawings of Swiss healer, artist and researcher Emma Kunz (1892 – 1963) in this work of art.

GLENNYS BRIGGS b. 1948, Mooroopna, Victoria. Language groups: Tuangwurrung, Yorta Yorta. Lives and works in Wodonga, Victoria

WHY 2021 collagraph, 3-layered screenprint 72.0 x 105.0 cm

Like time-lapse photography, my work is ever-changing to reveal a long history. Each scene sits upon the other like the layers of a midden, each revealing more of the story. When printing a story, I will add layers of different print techniques. I believe that this gives me a stronger image and story. My stories, too, have many layers to them and delve deep into our histories to uncover truth. If an Aboriginal person elects to speak for country or for their Ancestors, then the onus is on them to speak their truth. The settlement of this shared country has left many questions as to why certain events happened and are left unexplained. The cultural influences in my work reflect the strong connection to people and land.

DEIDRE BROLLO b. 1974, Newcastle, New South Wales. Lives and works in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory

Unsettled 2022 artist’s book, 8 hand-bound dossiers housed in a solander box (screenprints, archival pigment prints, laser cuts) 8.0 x 33.5 x 21.5 cm

The artist’s book Unsettled considers the motivations and consequences of acts of topography and toponymy – of placewriting and place-naming – and explores how language has been used as a colonial and bureaucratic tool to shape, control and ‘settle’ zones of upheaval. Drawing together thousands of Australian placenames, the work reflects on the many acts of imagination or memory that collectively wrote over this landscape, inscribing the map with narratives of emotion, bewilderment, violence, subjugation, opportunity or failure. In pulling against the organising principles of cartography, Unsettled seeks to disconcert, to discomfort and to disorganise, suggesting that the land, the map and the name are not co-extensive.

JENNIFER BUNTINE b. 1957, Chelsea, Victoria. Lives and works in Red Hill, Victoria

Bell Tower 2021 monotype 37.0 x 14.5 x 14.5 cm

The narrative, performative, and historic rituals I observe give meaning to my art practice. Created in 2021, these hand-printed monotypes have evolved into three dimensional forms and the paper structure reveals their given duality of both fragility and strength. The bell tower embodies the symbol of a summoning and humanity’s need for a collective awakening. The verticality of the work is an upward questioning, searching for understanding within a universal consciousness. The bells resonate within the physicality of the figures.

MATT BUTTERWORTH b. 1976, Melbourne, Victoria. Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

Untitled 2022 spray paint and acrylic on paper 200.0 x 280.0 cm

This artwork is part of my ongoing exploration into the inherent beauty of flora found throughout Victoria. Plant specimens of varying kinds become both material and subject in a painting deeply linked to performance and ‘action painting’. Each plant is selected via an organic process based on feeling and impulse. Once chosen, I set out arranging these materials in a way that connects them. I aim to create contrasts and dynamic surfaces. Paint is the final act, cementing their ‘silhouettes’ onto paper and finalising the overall image.

Represented by Studio Gallery, Melbourne and Sydney, and Han Feng, New York and Shanghai

FIONA CABASSI b. 1970, Melbourne, Victoria. Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

Stormy travels through spotted ponds 2022 paper, acrylic paint, watercolour, ink, coloured marker/fine liner 231.0 x 220.0 x 10.0 cm

The potential of paper seems infinite to me. It’s the basis of all my work, a flexible medium that I paint and draw on, cut and sculpt. While making Stormy travels through spotted ponds I was guided by the creative process, working sub-consciously and instinctively filling the surface of the paper with shapes, patterns and colour – creating a language of my own that’s built from mark making, scribbles and considered lines. Once cut out, the paper is woven and assembled to form a series of tableaux that intertwine upon the walls – an assemblage that translates my observations into wild, fecund imaginary worlds that co-habit and tangle together. I attempt to create curious otherworldly environments that play with our perceived notions of reality, where paper has a fluidity, transitioning from a flat, blank surface to an organic form filled with life.

JON CAMPBELL b. 1961, Belfast, Northern Ireland; arr. Australia 1964. Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

Greedy 2022 acrylic paint, printed street poster, watercolour pencil, collage 105.5. x 88.0 cm

With this work on paper I was thinking about how greedy the world has become. The divide between the so-called ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ has been brought to light these past couple of years. Unfortunately, profit is privileged over society’s welfare. This work steps into that conversation. The word greedy, in a slightly abstracted form, is painted over a previous artwork of mine from 1992 that incorporates band street posters. This fluoro-coloured poster was for the band De La Soul. The collaging and image-layering adds a degree of history to the work and creates multiple narratives. A story within a story, if you like.

Represented by Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney

SUSANNA CASTLEDEN b. 1968, London, United Kingdom; arr. Australia 1977. Lives and works in Fremantle, Western Australia

1:1 Wind Turbine Blade 2022 gesso and acrylic on washi paper 469.0 x 1662.0 cm

Created onsite at a wind farm in Western Australia, this artwork was made in and with the environment. The position of the wind turbines orients the blades to capture the power of the prevailing winds. By extension, that same wind energy impacted on the laboriously prepared washi paper sheets as they were bruised, creased and flattened against the turbine blades. I wanted to engage with the sheer scale of the turbines – as well as their location in one of Australia’s windiest regions – as a way to apprehend the physical and atmospheric registers of this immense energy source. The reference to scale in the title brings both an architectural and mapping perspective to the work. The blades are no longer an abstraction, at 1:1 scale they come into proximity with both the space of the gallery and to our own physical consciousness.

JACKY CHENG b. 1977, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; arr. Australia 2021. Lives and works on Yawuru country/ Broome, Western Australia

Honour and Love 2021 handmade kozo papers, sumi ink, kakashibu dye, kibiso, paper threads, copper, artist's hair, synthetic threads, organic fibres and threads of joss paper 180.0 x 180.0 x 5.0 cm

My practice is fundamentally about identity and awareness through cultural activities and memories of home, country and relationships. I have a deep interest in correlating and weaving narratives from my native experiences while mapping the esoteric and social relationships of my origins and my new-found home, environment and social surroundings. My awareness is amplified through my diasporic identity as a Chinese descendant in foreign borders as I continue to question my notion of ‘home’ and ‘belonging’, ‘here and there’ and the ‘in between’. I was highly influenced by the elders in my family where a plethora of cultural celebrations, practices and duties were performed for Chinese ritual purposes. Personal cultural histories of the most significant experiences were reflected, documented and expressed using papers and fibres as the predominant mediums in my practice. I now ‘make’ to remember.

BRIAN CHEUNG b. 1990, Melbourne, Victoria. Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

Sojourn 2022 artist book, ink on cut paper, box board 18.0 x 24.0 cm (folded); 24.0 x 216.0 cm (unfolded, 12 pages)

Sojourn is an artist book that investigates the dimensionality of a two-dimensional drawing, as well as themes of imagination and memory as a means of distraction and escapism. Rather than looking outward for inspiration, the pandemic era has forced a shift inward. As the world struggles under the weight of international conflicts, corporate greed and climate change, there comes a desire to fashion a safe space elsewhere. The pages in Sojourn form an elliptical journey, drawing from places visited in the past but removed of any obvious signifiers. The drawings build in detail and density until converging halfway and fading away once more. Although each panel is reflected and drawn twice, the holes and cut-outs littered throughout offer a multitude of openings and windows looking forwards and backwards. These hidden spaces open up as the viewer explores the piece, each time forming a unique outcome.

MATTHEW CLARKE b. 1986, Warrnambool, Victoria. Lives and works in Warrnambool, Victoria

This work titled Lost in Sydney Again is a fine liner pen on paper creation. It is about being lost in Sydney; being overwhelmed by the shapes, sizes and proportions of the buildings; being surrounded by people with unknown stories and how every window in the building has a story.

Lost in Sydney Again 2020 fine liner on paper 150.0 x 127.0 cm Represented by Mossenson Galleries, Perth

TIM COAD b. 1996, Hobart, Tasmania. Lives and works in Mimili Community, South Australia

Mintabie 2022 archival print on paper 133.0 x 160.0 cm

The abandoned opal mining town of Mintabie is dug into the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands. The ruination of a faded township nestled into the bleached-white sandstone now sits blindingly in the midday sun, juxtaposing with the red earth. Discarded papers sprawl the eroding shop floor, windswept and trodden. These are the neglected archives that document the scars on a sacred landscape. The ruins live as reminders that position us in a landscape of time. Our memories are constantly incomplete and erasing, as are the ruins themselves. Through the reciprocity of the landscape, the environment has returned the tools of its own ruin in the form of the paper archive. Through a conflation of photography and found material, this work re-surfaces and interrogates the complex cultural narrative of all who’ve left their mark on Mintabie.

TIMOTHY COOK b. 1958, Milikapiti, Melville Island, Northern Territory. Language group: Tiwi. Lives and works in Milikapiti, Melville Island, Northern Territory

Kulama 2022 locally sourced natural earth pigments on paper 57.0 x 76.0 cm Jilamara Arts and Craft Association, Northern Territory

Timothy’s art is very personal to him; he draws parlingarri jilamara (old designs), which he learnt from the wulimawi (old people). He creates many variations of these designs, which have been used for generations as a form of visual language. As long-time Jilamara member and governance figure Brian Farmer explained in relation to Timothy’s work: ‘My people didn’t have written text… it’s all done by painting. The story, like, it goes on from there… through painting is a way of remembering.’ Timothy embodies this mentality, a language through painting that is both parlingarri (old) and ningani (new). Throughout his career, Timothy has focused on variations of the Kulama design. The Kulama ceremony is an initiation for young Tiwi people that coincides with the harvest of wild yam in the late wet season when a ring appears around japarra (the moon). The circles in his work symbolise the moon, yam, the ritual circles of the ceremony and the pwanga (dots) echo the japalinga (stars).

JULIE DAVIES b. 1959, Maryborough, Victoria. Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

Memory and Matter – Albert Street Archive – a fragment from Mary Rizkalla’s collection #4 2021 inkjet print on archival rag paper 150.0 x 100.0 cm

We are left after a death with other people’s collections that inhabit our personal space; they consume rooms and the house groans under their weight. This photographic work explores aspects of the personal spaces we inhabit. It meticulously documents, rescales and isolates a collection of personal objects the artist is de-accessioning from her home. In Matter and Memory – Albert Street Archive – a fragment from Mary Rizkalla’s collection #4 (the artist’s mother-in-law), the work reveals a dedication to documentation and recording one’s existence through the existence of ‘things’.

CHRISTOPHER DAY b. 1978, Melbourne, Victoria. Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

Two Years 2022 acrylic and pigment print on archival rag paper 177.0 x 112.0 cm

My artistic practice includes painted photographic composite images made from my personal archive of analogue black and white photographs, spanning several years. Each work extends a variation on traditional still life photography through a process of composite layering, combining familiar and unfamiliar imagery to produce allegorical stories and narratives. Each work observes and interprets situations within everyday life, where ideas and objects have expanded beyond the limits of human use or necessity into abstract forms and notions. Thus, the photographic composite works remain deliberately ambiguous, functioning through layers of meaning that will adhere to my own historic references and shared or common knowledge. Two Years visually presents my thoughts from living through 2020 – 21.

NGILAN MARGARET DODD b. 1946, Sandy Bore, Northern Territory. Language group: Yankunytjatjara . Lives and works in Mimili, South Australia

ngayuku walka (my mark) 2022 paper raffia and fence wire 120.0 x 170.0 cm Mimili Maku Arts, South Australia

Milpatjunanyi is a game of making marks in the sand with a bent bit of wire to tell stories. I’ve been telling stories and making marks my entire life. I’m an old lady now, minyma pampa, and I’ve taught many kids and grandkids about Tjukurpa and inma by drawing in the sand. I’ve had many different ways of telling stories: singing, dancing, weaving, drawing, even painting! Earlier this year I saw this special paper at the art centre and decided to create a new kind of artwork with the very wire I used to use to make my first marks in the sand as a young girl. I’ve come around full circle, using paper and wire to hold my stories for the grandchildren, for everyone to see my drawings and song.

MEGAN EVANS b. 1957, Melbourne, Victoria. Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

ngurre tarra balances the books 2021 gouache on paper 43.0 x 100.0 cm

A document from 1864–65 relates to the legislation of an Appropriation Act in the parliament of Victoria. The document can’t be read easily due to its orientation. The language is impenetrable and is akin to the nature of the British laws and culture of the time. Ngurre is the Waddawurrung name for the bronze wing pigeon and tarra is the name for wing. Both these words were unknown to me even though I live on Waddawurrung country. The word appropriation means taking possession of something without consent. Painting on rare historical documents is my way of appropriating something from my culture to express my grief for what has been lost due to its impenetrable and dominating nature. These documents name people who were alive from 1864 to 1924 and who were part of the ‘civilising’ of the continent and the dispossessing of First Nations people of their land.

PHILIP FAULKS b. 1959, St Albans, United Kingdom; arr. Australia 1976. Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

Rise and Fall 2021 ink, gouache, pencil on paper 115.0 x 85.0 cm

As a small child in England our family lived near a military airbase. Rise and Fall combines two of my earliest childhood memories, my fascination with the aeroplane silhouettes on my father’s collection of WWII aircraft recognition flashcards, and an incident where a Lockheed Electric Lightning jet fighter malfunctioned and crashed into a field behind our house. The pilot ejected with seconds to spare, landing in a greenhouse and breaking both his legs. The loud explosion caused both my mother and grandmother to run out of the house screaming. It was 1962, and I was little more than three years old. Those formative recollections underpin this drawing – a rumination on the connections between art, science, technology and our innate urge to collect and categorise all things to try to comprehend our world. All this knowledge has driven our ascent as a species, and now appears to point the way to our decline.

EMMA FIELDEN b. 1977, Auckland, New Zealand; arr. Australia 1981. Lives and works in Sydney, New South Wales

Confluence 2020 ink on paper 28.0 x 60.0 cm Represented by Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney

My art practice is situated at a meeting point between science and poetics, bringing together research and material explorations that culminate in artworks that are studied meditations on the nature of infinity, the universe and our human place in it. Working across drawing, performance, sculptural installation and video, I draw upon opposing philosophies of infinite divisibility and coalescence, evoking phenomena such as black holes, the collision of galaxies and the psychological or emotional distance between two people. Confluence is a meditation on confluence and divergence: coming together and moving apart. The two sheets of paper start out flat, edges touching, wet ink meeting at a single point. As the ink dries and becomes hard, the paper buckles, shifts and distorts. The paper allows itself to be moved by the ink. The two halves that were once joined remain side-by-side; however, they never quite fit back together.

ROBERT FIELDING b. 1969, Port Augusta, South Australia. Language groups: Pitjantjara, Yankuntjatjara, Arrente. Lives and works Mimili, South Australia

AIM 2022 screenprint on paper 84.0 x 59.0 cm each (quadriptych) Mimili Maku Arts, South Australia

Paper has a short and turbulent history in Australia. Documents on paper have been used as a tool and justification to dominate people, cultures and ideas. AIM explores the role paper has played in the removal of Aboriginal children and the invasion of Aboriginal lands by faith-based religions and colonial governments. For this work I have reappropriated Australian Inland Missions posters in circulation during the mid-20th century, the exact time my father, Bruce Fielding, was removed from his family on the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands. My father was never reunited with his mother. This work is a process of unlocking his story, of restoring traumas and truths of the past and repairing the present. By printing these works in our cultural colours, they stand as a reminder that our culture remains strong, our histories continue to be spoken far away from the institutionalised archives and official documentations on paper.

NIGEL FITTON b. 1961, St Kitts, South Australia. Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

Man 2021 rag type paper, charcoal, gold leaf 73.0 x 57.0 cm

This drawing is a continuation of a series of twenty drawings titled Capriccio. This exploration departs from conventional architectural drawing through the establishment of a dialogue within the context of the city and its pictorial development through the history of drawing. Architectural juxtapositions, fictional ruins and contemporary threads and forms evolve, in commune with iconographic images and the new, viewed through historic projection and perspective. The materials used are primal and noble. Charcoal and gold leaf on rag-based paper are almost biblical; these combined with expansive subject matter and a historical lens creates a new modern vista at the brink. This image is constructed directly onto the page from a small cartoon only partially conceived at the outset. This deliberate step fostered new improvised detail along with a compositional mapping through a wandering journey of an imagined city fixed in time. 37

TODD FULLER b. 1988, Maitland, New South Wales. Lives and works in Sydney, New South Wales

1727; Pieter 4 Adriaan 2021 digital video: chalk, charcoal, acrylic animation on maps dimensions variable Represented by .M Contemporary, Sydney

The earliest recorded gay hate crime in Australia doesn’t appear to lay at the hands of Governor Macquarie, but rather on the Zeewijk, a Dutch ship marooned in 1727. When the skipper veered off course, the vessel ran into half-moon reef near Geraldton. While the crew built their new boat, two young boys were caught in the ‘gruesome sin of Sodom and Gomorrah’. Known to us through scarce diary references and ship logs, what transpired was one of the first European trials in Australia, before the boys were abandoned on separate desert islands overlooking one another. Here, we can only assume they would have watched each other succumb to dehydration, madness and death in what was a brutal start to Australia’s Queer History. Painstakingly drawn on incomplete navigational maps of the 18th century, Fuller’s hand-drawn animation speculates on the voyage and the nature of young Pieter and Adriaan’s relationship.

GLORIA GAVENOR b. 1948 Gununa, Mornington Island, Queensland. Language group: Gangalidda. Lives and works in Gununa, Mornington Island, Queensland

Wallabies are hunted most of the year and our old people would cook them in underground ovens and roast them over hot coals. In our Lardil language we call them Karnjil.

Wallabies’ Party 2022 acrylic on Arches® paper 58.0 x 76.5 cm MIART – Mornington Island Art, Queensland

JULIA GORMAN b. 1968 Melbourne, Victoria. Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

6 Easy Pieces 2022 acrylic ink on 400 gsm watercolour paper 246.0 x 273.0 cm; 123.0 x 91.0 cm each (6 sheets)

The six drawings that make up 6 Easy Pieces were done quickly, spontaneously, trying not to overthink the situation. The whiplash line was a fundamental motif of the Art Nouveau movement, a sinuous and asymmetrical line that was originally modelled on natural forms such as vines. It was completely integrated into architecture and design, lost its free-form quality and stiffened into cliché. The Art Nouveau period itself is so interesting to me as a response to massive technological changes in everyday life. As well, the fact that it ultimately died with WWI and the Spanish flu makes it resonate with the current period. With this work I am trying to kick some life into a period of art regarded as being dead as a doornail, to see if I can resuscitate it, open it up to the present and make it into something useful to us today.

KATE GORRINGE-SMITH b. 1966, Melbourne, Victoria. Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

How do you sleep at night? 2022 52 paper ‘pillows’ floor installation printed with rust, cyanotype, leaves, seeds, natural dyes and fire; paper (Fabriano Tiepolo 100% cotton rag), pillow inserts, cotton thread, glue 25.0 x 500.0 x 360.0 cm

How do you sleep at night?, an installation of fifty-two paper ‘pillows’, bears witness to the collective nightmare of climate change. The pillows, marred by marks created by the elements of earth, water, air and fire in conjunction with natural and man-made objects, evoke the collective fears and experiences of climate change that spill into our most vulnerable moments as we sleep. Whether through fire, drought, or flood, by 2022 every Australian’s life has been touched by climate change. The question ‘How do you sleep at night?’ can be asked with genuine concern to those trying to tackle or survive the effects of this global crisis. Alternatively, it can be used to accuse those in power who still fail to act. There are fiftytwo pillows, one for each week of the year, to represent the march of years in which governments have failed to act.

MANDY GUNN b. 1943 Leeds, United Kingdom; arr. Australia 1966. Lives and works in Tarwin Lower, Victoria

Architexture – Ways of Seeing 2022 100% recycled braille paper and cardboard 150.0 x 100.0 x 12.0 cm

This is the most recent work in my ongoing preoccupation with collecting the leftovers of our society, with an emphasis on paper. My long-term practice is one of disordering and reordering these materials into sculptural forms using construction methods of cutting, rebuilding or, often, weaving. Architexture – Ways of Seeing consists of twenty-four panels of hand-cut recycled braille paper on recycled cardboard constructions. Six thousand strips are reordered and built into 3D-grid forms with pattern repeats suggesting an architextural façade. The materials carry their own references to the amount of waste we create and sustainability, plus a more subtle message about the experience of going into a gallery. For most of us this is about looking at artworks with directives about not touching. For a forgotten minority – the partially sighted or blind – this is an experience they will never have.

MARIE HAGERTY b. 1964, Sydney, New South Wales. Lives and works in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory

Evil Eye 2021 digital print 90.0 x 67.0 cm Represented by Olsen Gallery, Sydney

Marie Hagerty examines the matter of life through paintings, collage and drawing, incorporating the curvilinear surface forms of biomorphic abstraction with increasing references to figurative imagery suffused with an erotic emphasis. Her works constantly shift between figuration and abstraction, creating alluring and refined hybrid images that seem to be arrested in movement, space and time. More than a form of luscious visual engagement, they implore a deeper visceral and visual reaction. Described as sensuous and beguiling, Hagerty’s technically precise and rounded forms also suggest a feminist narrative. Hagerty’s recent work combines layers of influences from Russian Constructivism to mid-Century design. Surface effects and planes appear to shift, mutate and evolve from the purely formal to the suggestion of sophisticated sexual play. She deploys these devices with a precision bordering on surgical skill, as sharply defined edges slice, overlap and interfere with each other in a state of constant visual arousal. 43

AMBER HAMMAD b. 1981, Lahore, Pakistan; arr. Australia 2015. Lives and works in Sydney, New South Wales

Ladyland – 3 Women with 3 Right Hands 2022 mixed media on handmade wasli paper 25.0 x 35.0 cm

The colonised Indian subcontinent was not only a politically contested space but was also a region filled with tensions between feminism and patriarchy. While male scholars were persistently preaching women to submit to male authority, in 1905 Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (a Muslim woman writer and social activist) published her feminist sci-fi utopian story ‘Sultana’s Dream’. Subverting the male dominant culture around her, she introduced ‘Ladyland’, a place where women are in charge, solar-powered technology rules, and men are restricted to the seclusion of the household spaces. This painting stems from Hossain’s work, while borrowing visual aesthetics from Mughal miniature paintings, using text as puns for the general disregard of feminism, and continues with artist’s usual practice of being the protagonist in her works, ‘doing feminism’ (Anne Marsh), and being a ‘feminist killjoy’ (Sara Ahmed), in the face of patriarchy’s persistent problematic power politics around the globe.

EUAN HENG b. 1945, Oban, Scotland; arr. Australia 1977. Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

Gladiator 2022 paper cut collage 16.5 x 12.0 cm Represented by Niagara Galleries, Melbourne

Originating from an imaginative engagement with reality, this paper cut collage, selected from a new and larger body of work, displays the characteristics and trajectory of an evolving artistic production. At the moment of assembly, paper cut collages give shape to and advance corresponding paintings. The work echoes the classical principles and conventions that continue to inform my studio practice, which now includes abstraction or, to be precise, abstracting from. This method of construction initiates new opportunities in the representation of the motif in both shape and colour. Geometric limitations magnify pictorial immediacy and economy, and this economy is informed by flatness. It is not my aim to express thoughts about what my works depict but to incite thought by means of what and how they depict. Although my ambition is to expand the potential for pictorial expression and communication, in the end it is, after all, the making that impels my motivation.

BRIDGET HILLEBRAND b. 1963, Melbourne, Victoria. Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

High Tide 2022 linocut on washi paper 320.0 x 72.0 x 5.0 cm

My creative practice explores the deconstruction of the twodimensional image plane and examines the materiality of physical and implied interruptions in the constructed printed surface. Through the act of folding and layering printed washi paper I imagine the folds of wind and water. The back of the printed washi paper is shown to reveal subtleties in fibre, tone and texture. High Tide reflects on the world’s rising sea levels and suggests the ebb and flow of an ocean tide. It hangs freely from the wall so that it can be affected by the currents of air that pass over it, just as winds determine the shape of breaking waves.

ANNA HOYLE b. 1969, Melbourne, Victoria. Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

1800BIOSEKURE 2022 gouache and acrylic on paper 152.0 x 280.0 cm

1800BIOSEKURE are gouache and acrylic on paper panels inspired by my longstanding interest in words and phrases inspired by selfhelp, advertising, wellness trends and consumer culture. In this work I have built on my love for the aesthetics of text in my invented phrases. I like the graphic mix of words with visual manifestations of suburban essentials: active wear, sponges and scourers, poolnoodles, yoga mats and security tape. I love playing with and re-inventing everyday subject matter and the artistic capacity for ironic, humorous and critical commentary on consumer culture.

ALANA HUNT b. 1984, Sydney, New South Wales. Lives and works on Kununurra, Miriwoong Country, Western Australia

A very clear picture 2021 black pen on A4 paper, edition of 967 photocopied sets 29.7 x 21.0 cm each (triptych).

These hastily scribbled notes were produced as Sam Walsh AO, former CEO of Rio Tinto, narrated over 2hr 41m without pause. He read the project summaries of 967 Section 18 applications that sought permission to ‘destroy, damage or alter an Aboriginal site’ via the West Australian Aboriginal Heritage Act between 2010 and 2020. Since the legislation came into effect in 1972, over 3300 applications have been processed. Only three have ever been declined. Under the guise of protecting Aboriginal heritage this legislation provides a pathway for its destruction. While Sam read, I wrote. Trying to capture a word or phrase from every summary. These notes, and the video Sam’s narration accompanies, paint a very clear picture of colonisation – how everything from large-scale mines to seemingly innocuous things like footpaths, jetties and housing estates play a part in this violent nexus of industry, government and settler life. It is a specific kind of violence, birthed through bureaucratic processes that appear clean on paper, but wreak havoc in the world.

ELIZA HUTCHISON b. 1969, Johannesburg, South Africa; arr. Australia 1969. Lives and works in Somers, Victoria

MUMMUMMUMUMMUMMUMMUM, 2021 – 22, 2022 inkjet print on vinyl 175.0 x 260.0; 221.0 x 260.0; 175.0 x 260.0; 175.0 x 260.0 cm Represented by Haydens Art, Melbourne

Placed firmly within our present cultural and historical contexts, Hutchison explores the idea of biography in which personal archive is both indexically abstracted with and enmeshed in the narrative of mass culture as an alternative to traditional self-portraiture. MUMMUMMUMUMMUMMUMMUM, 2021 – 22 is a multi-image work that explores the notion of a ‘generative visual biography’. Initiated during the artist’s residency at the Victorian Parliament, the work comprises sixteen composite images. Through the process of collage, reconfiguration and sequencing, the installation intersperses imagery of the environmental protest marches in Victoria in 2019 and autobiographical text messages from her child/ teen’s oft-sent familial protests and aphorisms. This work explores her own account of motherhood set against the contemporary climate movement, where the mother is at once environmental and human. These intimate ideas of mothering, anxiety and discontent are explored here in relation to broader socio-political contexts. Conceived much like poetry, the works construct an idiosyncratic visualisation of a ‘personal yet collective self’ – a mirror of our time. 49

EUNICE NAPANANGKA JACK b. 1939, Winparrku, Western Australia. Language groups: Luritja, Ngaanyatjarra, Pintupi. Lives and works in Haasts Bluff, Northern Territory

Kuruyultu 2020 etching 78.0 x 107.0 cm Ikuntji Artists Art Centre, Northern Territory

This is my country. I can’t remember how it happened, because it happened before I was born. I have a scar on my back from it. My grandfather speared a wallaby at Kuruyultu. That night he ate that wallaby. At the same time my mother could feel me moving inside her. She was heavily pregnant with me. That next morning, after my grandfather had speared the wallaby and eaten it, I was born. I was born at Kuruyultu, near the rock hole there. My father, my mother, my big sister and my father’s brother, we all left together and went to Haasts Bluff. I have been back to Kuruyultu for visits, but I never lived in my country again. I think about it every day. Only my father knows all the stories for that country. I know the story of the wallaby mother and daughter that left me with a birthmark.

LISA JONES b. 1964, London, United Kingdom; arr. Australia 2002. Lives and works in Sydney, New South Wales

Residual #otherworlds 5 2020 graphite and gesso on papier-mâché 45.0 x 100.0 x 60.0 cm

Residual #otherworlds 5 is a sculptural manifestation of imaginary maps tracing multiple layers of the built environment. I explore the patterns and systems we navigate through the city, counterpoised with marks of nature in the form of pavement cracks found and photographed. The drawings are constructed from stencils of those cracks and reimagined historic and contemporary maps, finely drawn through layers of graphite and pencil and collaged to form a papier-mâché surface – thus allowing the making to reveal the drawing. The spherical creations evolve into globes – evoking the ‘pocket globes’ popular during Enlightenment Britain, which rendered the evolving cartographic understanding of the world. I investigate the places I have lived in Sydney and London, personally reflecting correlated emotional tensions of dual nationality and inculcated histories. My resultant otherworld is a finely balanced entity – seemingly solid and eternal yet permeable and fragile. Its elements complement and contrast, maintaining equilibrium. 51

LOCUST JONES b. 1963, Christchurch, New Zealand; arr. Australia 1988. Lives and works in Katoomba, New South Wales

Fire and fury 2022 ink on paper 240.0 x 700.0 cm Represented by Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney

I created the hundreds of drawings that make up Fire and Fury in 2021 – 22 in response to being invited to create an animation. By scanning these drawings into an animation software at twentyfour frames per second I was able to make a four-minute animation. The drawings responded to the 24/7 news cycle and so are a timeline or point of reference for a brief moment in time that most would rather forget and that we now see as unprecedented. When looking at these drawings we realise that we forget what happened yesterday. Global pandemics, war, floods, bushfires resulting from climate heating. Words we have not heard of before came into people’s consciousness, such as wet bulb and heat dome, jab, Covid fog, zoom porn and doomscrolling, to name a few.

MATTHEW JONES b. 1961, Melbourne, Victoria. Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

Hostage to the Future (after May Gibbs) 2022 pen and ink, etching ink, block ink, oil stick, inkjet and acrylic on Fabriano paper, stained canvas on painted MDF, pine with wooden blocks 300.0 x 750.0 cm

I believe the children are our future. I have to. I have no choice. We are incapable of conceiving any politics of the future without recourse to an absurdly abstract notion of (perfectly innocent and usually white) childhood. One queer writer calls it the ‘fascism of the baby’s face’1. Hostage to the Future is part of a series reinterpreting May Gibbs’ 1918 Snugglepot and Cuddlepie as queerly contemporary. In my reading, Gibbs’ Banksia Men represent a 20th century notion of homosexuality as challenge to the reproductive order because they threaten to recruit, to abuse, or to just plain abstain from producing children. That notion may have faded in 2022, but at sixty years of age, I am of the era that identifies with that challenge.

1. Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004). p75. 53

COL JORDAN b. 1935, Sydney, New South Wales. Lives and works in Sydney, New South Wales

Letterlinked 2021 acrylic on paper 74.0 x 285.0 cm Represented by Mossenson Galleries, Perth

The letters of the alphabet are the products of centuries of use and adaptation. Not only do they convey meaning but their forms have been refined both consciously and unconsciously, thereby becoming objects of aesthetic delight. Because of this, a recurring theme in my work has been the use of letters as a principal element of design in my paintings. The five paintings of the Letterlinked series are classic examples. My aim is a metamorphosis from utility to art.

DAVID KEATING b. 1977, Melbourne, Victoria. Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

The state of things 2022 acrylic and ink on paper 56.0 x 76.0 cm each (diptych)

In my work I am interested in how line drawing allows the most direct access to new ways of thinking. Focused on the spontaneous creation of realities, line drawing opens possibilities to deal on a material and emotional level with fundamental questions about the way in which we create our realities. The state of things belongs to a group of work that deals with the body and the limits, boundaries and names that are imposed on it. In these works, the threshold between the internal and external is questioned. Working on a pink ground, the drawings are infused with an atmosphere of internality, this ground becomes a kind of stage for conceptual and personal speculations.

NICHOLAS MANGAN b. 1979, Geelong, Victoria. Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

Termite Economies (Trophallaxis V/ White-anting III) 2020 acrylic paint on watercolour paper and UV print 77.0 x 58.0 cm each (diptych) Represented by Sutton Gallery, Melbourne

Alert to both history and science, Nicholas Mangan is a multidisciplinary artist known for unearthing and interrogating narratives embedded in objects, times and places. Through a practice bridging drawing, sculpture, film and installation, Mangan creates politically astute and disconcerting assemblages that address some of the most galvanising issues of our time: the ongoing impacts of colonialism, humanity’s fraught relationship with the natural environment, and the complex and evolving dynamics of the global political economy.

BRIAN MARTIN b. 1972, Sydney, New South Wales. Language groups: Muruwari, Bundjalung, Kamilaroi. Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

Methexical Countryscape: Paakantyi # 16 2020 charcoal on paper 220.0 x 170.0 cm Represented by William Mora Galleries, Melbourne

Place (Country) and its reconfiguration into and around colonisation is vital in contemporary society. This is against the proposition of the relationality of Country to people and between peoples through an Indigenous position: Revisitation is an important learning event. When you go back to a past story it is unchanged but you are different, so you get a new view of what the story means because of who you have become. The redirection that comes from living awareness of the whole of life is key to decolonization. The intelligence of Country reveals itself to us if we listen well, observe these connections closely, speak softly, and be ourselves.1 In my research and practice, articulating Place and Country through revisitation configures how we understand regard and relationality. An Indigenous ideology positioned on this is the relational: Relationality and Place have agency. Place is about the matrix of relationalities and this vital importance of Place and can be articulated through drawing. 1 Uncle Charles Moran, Uncle Greg Harrington, and Norm Sheehan, “On Country Learning”, Design and Culture 10, no. 1, (2018): p71 – 9 57

AHC (ANDREW) MCDONALD b. 1963, Boorloo (Perth), Western Australia. Lives and works in Boorloo (Perth), Western Australia

One Punch 2021 composition relief print 270.0 x 130.0 cm

One Punch is a unique-state composition relief print taking on the subject of ‘one punch’ deaths in Australia – the only country to have a specific legal category for such attacks. The work is inspired by Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine research and references the shocking number of these deaths since 2000. The hundreds of impressions are individually composed using single hand-carved rubber blocks rolled with relief ink. The paper is roughly cut from an industrial roll, taking advantage of the possibilities paper that size offers. Every single pool of blood is unique because grief is always individual, but the figures are the same because the manner of these senseless deaths is so depressingly similar. The work is 2.7 metres tall, with vertical and diagonal interfering patterns. Like the bare statistics themselves, it’s challenging and difficult to look at. A document of contemporary Australian life.

CALLUM MCGRATH b. 1995, Brisbane, Queensland. Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

Responsibilities to Time 2021 collage 29.0 x 65.0 cm

Responsibilities to Time is an ongoing project that stems from my research into public memorials dedicated to queer subjects and communities. Images of people convening at birthdays or holidaying together have been replaced by pictures of queer memorials and spaces of celebration. The format of the family photo album is deliberately deployed to draw attention to the way that in queer communities kinship can be constructed by actively nurturing one’s ‘family of choice’ rather than those tied to you by biological reproduction. My use of amateur photography acknowledges that uncovering the past is often an intuitive process that necessitates reading between the lines of archives or searching within unofficial sources. By inserting these monuments within the vernacular format of the family album, I seek to emphasise how queer stories are too often left out of official history books.

ROB MCLEISH b. 1976, Melbourne, Victoria. Lives and works in Rye, Victoria

Distortions 2021 pencil on paper 59.4 cm x 42.0 cm each (quadriptych) Represented by Neon Parc, Melbourne

Drawing is the central medium that underpins my practice. My work prioritises evocation over critique, utilising a carefully crafted, idiosyncratic visual language to explore themes of desire and decay. The grafting of ambiguous, amorphous forms onto familiar art-historical imagery from Classicism to Formalism is a reoccurring motif throughout my practice. Distortions visually disrupts assumptions of permanence and dominant cultural hierarchies. The work is typical of my practice, which strives to elicit visceral, often antithetical, psychological experiences; to be simultaneously seductive and discordant.

JENNIFER MILLS b. 1966, Bendigo, Victoria. Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

In the echo chamber (something out of nothing, 3 x Jennifers, 1975/1976) 2022 watercolour and gouache on paper 53.0 x 73.0 cm

This drawing is based on my 1975 and 1976 primary school photos. In Grade 3 I decided not to smile for the photograph; I didn’t like my teeth. A year later, I chose to smile for the photograph. I still didn’t like my teeth, but I thought it best to have two versions of myself documented. These photographs were so important to me then, and even now, when I look at them, they elicit so many memories and reflections. I have the photograph from 1975 but the other is missing. I found a copy of it on Facebook. I read all the comments, intrigued by the variations in memories and experience. I cut the photos up, removing and adding faces to make one composite image. Recomposed and re-imagined, temporally unstable, thoughts, past and present echoed over the image as I drew.

RAY MONDE b. 1971, Sydney, New South Wales. Lives and works in Seattle, Washington and Braidwood, New South Wales

Love on the Moon 2022 papier-mâché and collage 86.0 x 65.0 x 65.0 cm

Ray Monde lives and works between Braidwood, Australia, and Seattle, United States of America. Paper has been his obsession since childhood, when he plastered his bedroom wall on the family farm near Taree with cut-outs from glossy magazines. After a successful career in advertising in Sydney, London and New York, Monde returned to his fascination with paper, which shapes his practice today. Monde’s technique involves hand-tearing and over-painting fragments of paper. These elements are layered into detailed compositions that speak to the artist’s relationship with the physical and emotional landscapes that surround him. Love on the Moon is based on the traditional form of the Moon Jar. Crafted in papier-mâché and collage, it charts the five most significant moments in the artist’s relationship with his husband. Inspired by traditional Chinese landscape painting, the motifs on the jar reflect stages in a relationship, from desire to happiness and abundance.

KENT MORRIS b. 1964, Townsville, Queensland. Language group: Barkindji. Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

Barkindji Blue Sky – Ancestral Connections #9 2020 giclee print on paper 160.0 x 110.0 cm Represented by Vivien Anderson Gallery, Melbourne

Barkindji Blue Sky – Ancestral Connections #9 manipulates elements from the built environment and nature into new forms that reflect aspects of First Peoples’ cultural heritage and reinforce cultural continuity since time immemorial. It highlights the importance of the continuous transmission of culture for First Nations communities. The intertwining of First Nations knowledge systems and western technology is an integral element of my work. By visually deconstructing and reassembling western systems, my art practice reveals the continuing presence and patterns of First Peoples history, culture and knowledge in the contemporary Australia landscape despite ongoing interventions. As a symbol of rapid technological change, the reshaped telecommunication infrastructure begins to embody old and new knowledge systems merging, like a modern-day virtual message stick. The kiinki (corella) represent ancient and ongoing links to the cosmos in a cultural continuum of shared knowledge that reinforces spiritual cohesion and an unbreakable connection to Country. 63

DHAMBIT MUNUŊGURR b. 1968, Yirrkala, Northern Territory. Language group: Djapu. Lives and works in Yirrkala, Northern Territory

Durrk 2021 acrylic on paper and etching on paper 75.0 x 56.0 cm Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, Northern Territory

This is from the song of the Brolga. She is my clan’s maternal grandmother. She is dancing. And she sings this as her feet leave the ground. She is flying from her nest to her destiny. I am that bird. This is me. I can fly.

GAVIN NAMARNYILK b. 1987, Gunbalanya, Northern Territory. Language group: Kunwinjku. Lives and works on Kabulwarnamyo outstation, Gunbalanya, Northern Territory

Algaigho (Fire lady) 2022 ochre and acrylic on Arches® paper 61.0 x 41.0 cm Injalak Arts, Northern Territory

Gavin is an emerging artist living on Kabulwarnamyo outstation, a very remote community founded by his grandfather Bardayal ‘Lofty’ Nadjamerrek AO. Bardayal taught Gavin how to paint. Algaigho, the Fire Woman, is a rarely shared story and songline that connects Katherine with sites in Kakadu National Park and from there into western Arnhem Land. Algaigho, the Fire Woman, planted the kuybuk (yellow banksias) in the woodlands and used their smouldering flowers to carry fire. She used to travel with a fire doing lots of burn outs and bush fires. She would carry kuybuk with her to light fires easily. In the evenings she used to cook bush tucker. She would hunt by burning the grass to get the animals to run out. She travelled from Katherine to Nourlangie. She got stuck at Nourlangie and turned it into a djang (sacred) place. Kumyoukumouk is a songline that tells her story. At Nanguluwur is a rock art painting of Algaigho.

GLEN NAMUNDJA b. 1963, Gunbalanya, Northern Territory. Language group: Kunwinjku. Lives and works in Gunbalanya, Northern Territory

Yingarna 2022 ochre on Arches® paper 102.0 x 152.0 cm Injalak Arts, Northern Territory

In this work of phenomenal power, intricacy and size, Glen creates a syncretic painting combining important Creation Time stories from western Arnhem Land into one work. The eponymous figure, Yingarna, is seen with her dilly bags at the top centre of the composition. Yingarna is the creation mother of western Arnhem Land – she brought the different peoples and languages with her over the sea from the north and deposited them on respective clan estates in Arnhem Land. Yingarna gave birth to Ngalyod, the Rainbow Serpent who figures in many different Creation Time stories. Glen has also painted scenes from Korlobarr dja Dalkken and Ngalmangyi dja Ngarrbek Creation Time stories, as well as kinga (salt water crocodile) and other animals that can be found in the billabong across from Injalak Art centre where Glen works. The exceptionally fine rarrk that Glen employs in his work represents his identity as a Yirridjdja moiety man and the reflections of sunlight coruscating over the surface of the billabong.

MITJILI NAPURRULA b. 1945, Haasts Bluff, Northern Territory; d. 2019. Language group: Luritja. Lived and worked Hassts Bluff, Northern Territory

Watiya Tjuta 2020 screenprint 60.0 x 100.0 cm Ikuntji Artists Art Centre, Northern Territory

“ After I got married, my mother taught me my father’s Tjukurrpa in the sand; that’s what I’m painting on the canvas.” Mitjili paints her father’s Tjukurrpa, the ceremonial spear straightening, in Uwalkari country (Gibson Desert region). This site, south of Walungurru (Kintore), some 520 kilometres west of Mparntwe (Alice Springs), is where the artist’s Mutikatjirri ancestors assembled their kulata (spears) for a conflict with the Tjukula men. The watiya tjuta (acacia trees) are the trees that are used to make these spears. Uwalkari country is abundant with watiya tjuta, as well as sand hills and other plants. Mitjili paints the motif of the watiya tjuta, carrying on the recurring motif as her mother used to draw in the sand. Her mother passed on this Dreaming to her.

YURIA OKAMURA b. 1987 Tokyo, Japan; arr. Australia 2003. Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

Temple of Nature #1 2022 acrylic, pen on paper 100.0 x 100.0 cm

My drawing practice brings together and reinterprets diverse metaphysical imaginings from across cultures and histories through the utopian language of geometry and diagrammatic aesthetics. I map and reconfigure geometric forms that reference patterns in nature, esoteric symbolism, alchemical diagrams, religious architecture and decoration, and spiritualist abstract painting. My drawings visualise contemplative spaces by using architecture and gardens as visual metaphors. Positing the garden as a site of harmony between nature and culture, I draw up garden-like spaces combining geometric and botanical imageries. Through this combination, I interweave visual references to various religious traditions and animistic worldviews. With a floral image centred within a symmetrical composition, my work enshrines nature within imagined architecture. In this way, I envision an open-ended contemplative space where nature and culture, and the physical and metaphysical worlds, come together, and invite holistic interpretations of the world around us.

TOM POLO b. 1985, Sydney, New South Wales. Lives and works in Sydney, New South Wales

IN A PART OF YOUR MIND, I AM YOU 2022 acrylic on paper 152.0 x 112.0 cm Represented by STATION, Melbourne and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney

Tom Polo’s practice explores how conversation, gesture and exchange are embodied acts of portraiture. Frequently incorporating text and figurative elements, his works draw upon acute observations, absurdist encounters, personal histories, and imagined personas. An ongoing interest across his practice is the emotional and performative relationships between people within social, theatrical and psychological spaces. For IN A PART OF YOUR MIND, I AM YOU, Polo uses a phrase that has been revisited at different points throughout the artist’s practice. These words speak to the vast points of exchange in our relationships – with others and with ourselves – of boundaries that are constructed and dissolved, of closeness and intimacy, proximity and distance, fantasy and reality. Created using a wet-on-wet application, the text appears fluid – melting, dissolving and transforming – and yet strong, static and enduring, much like the nature of these relationships. 69

JASMINE POOLE AND CHRIS SEWELL Poole b. 1983, Sydney, New South Wales. Sewell b. 1985, Suttonin-Ashfield, United Kingdom; arr. Australia 2012. Both artists live and work in Sydney, New South Wales

Stay Just As You Are 2022 paper (laser cut) 163.0 x 130.0 cm

From a shared interest in storytelling, design and preservation, Jasmine Poole and Chris Sewell collaborate to create work that explores the cultural fabric of the everyday experience. Using imagery and found typography from shared trips across Australia, this work in paper mimics the appearance of the lace curtains that hang in the windows of many suburban homes. A desire to remember and the need to be remembered are inherent qualities to the human experience. The work is designed to evoke a sense of nostalgia and a longing for what is no longer present.

LUCIENNE RICKARD b. 1981, Lithgow, New South Wales. Lives and works in nipaluna (Hobart), Tasmania

Fold 2021 graphite on paper 150.0 x 150.0 cm Represented by Michael Bugelli, Hobart

I have been exploring ideas of endurance and wear throughout my entire art practice across many different mediums and disciplines. Fold is part of my most recent body of work. It was made over an eight-hour period – one full work day in my studio. I folded and un-folded a large piece of paper, making the folds with as much force as I could. I wanted the folds to cause trauma, permanent change. I also rubbed graphite dust into the paper until it was completely saturated. I made the dust that same day by grinding sharpened pencils on sandpaper. It was an arduous and physically difficult day. I wanted to exhaust both myself and the paper. I wanted to see if the trauma and wear of the making process could be transformative, even beautiful.

BRIAN ROBINSON b. 1973, Waiben (Thursday Island), Queensland. Language group: Kala Lagaw Ya, Wuthathi. Lives and works in Cairns, Queensland

Legacy: One Umbrella, Eight hundred and eighty thousand voices, sixty thousand years of occupancy 2022 linocut 80.0 x 100.0 cm Represented by Mossenson Galleries, Perth 72

Since European settlement, Indigenous Australians have fought for recognition. The 1960s and 70s was a period of heightened Indigenous activism and saw significant action taken by groups in the land rights struggle. Through the 1960s came the Yirrkala Bark Petitions, the Freedom Ride, the walk-off at Wave Hill Station and the referendum to include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the census. But on a rainy day (26 January) in 1972, Michael Anderson, Billy Craigie, Bert Williams and Tony Coorey set up a beach umbrella on the lawns opposite Parliament House in Canberra. Describing the umbrella as the Aboriginal Embassy, the men were determined for those in power to hear of the ever-growing challenges facing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples across the country. From umbrella to tent, the embassy is now the site of the longest protest in the world for Indigenous land rights, sovereignty and self-determination.

TEHO ROPEYARN b. 1988, Mount Isa, Queensland. Language groups: Angkamuthi, Yadhaykana. Lives and works in Cairns, Queensland

Ayarra (rainy season) 2021 vinyl-cut print on paper 154.0 x 227.0 cm Represented by Onespace Gallery, Queensland

Teho Ropeyarn is a printmaker from Injinoo, Cape York, whose practice focuses on the preservation of traditional and historical oral stories of Country. Ropeyarn’s visual narratives are recreated through a contemporary lens using metaphors as forms and design elements that are representative of his totems, clan groups and the land, sea and sky of Country. Ayarra (rainy season) can be interpreted from multiple vantage points: looking across the land with an approaching rain shower; a topdown view of a pool of water, a flooded country, and/or water and the land – separated but connecting elements of the wet season in Cape York. Represented in the oval form are design elements based on the December wet season. They are: the mango tree leaf, the corrugation of Cape York’s Peninsula Development Road, the sprouting buds of the poinciana tree, yam vine symbolising traditional lands, the pitcher plant, the termite mounds, and grass trees – all part of wet season in Cape York. 73

SANGEETA SANDRASEGAR b. 1977, Brisbane, Queensland. Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

On the field of Truth on the battlefield of life IV 2021 pierced and cut paper hand-dyed in Indian Madder dimensions variable, each part approx. 40.0 x 25.0 cm Represented by Niagara Gallery, Melbourne 74

The five cut-outs form part of a cyclical project based upon readings of the Bhagavad Gita and are a continuation of my engagement with dualities and hybrids, shadow and light, and our interpretation of what is seen as incomplete and changeable. This iteration is a reflection upon my role as an artist and my new understanding of time, becoming a mother in the past, socially isolating two years. Intertwining sources that speak to my family history and research of Southeast Asian cultures, these masks draw visual reference from the Keralan spiritual theatre Kathakali, a performative mode to which renditions of the Mahabharata are intrinsic. They are dyed in Indian Madder – a pigment laden with the histories of Empire, economic imperatives and social injustice. Reflecting the historical importance of sewing and needlework to female creativity and communication, the works deploy mark making through the piercing, cutting and hand-dyeing of paper.

THEO STRASSER b. 1956, Arnhem, The Netherlands; arr. Australia 1960. Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

Atmos 2021 artist book, paper, hand-painted digital content in an edition of 6 42.0 x 30.0 x 3.0 cm in clamshell box

Atmos is a response, a call for concern, a definition of our atmosphere, how we breathe, and what lies in store for us in the future. This artist book was completed when the IPCC report on climate change was released by the United Nations in August 2021. Atmos looks at our relationship with our environment. It takes the notion that through artist books we can contribute to developing a state of awareness of our environment. It is a paper-based declaration, an abstract visual language that is a witness to our uncertain times, but it also seeks out a glimmer of hope in acts of affirmative action from within the pages.

MARINA STROCCHI b. 1961, Melbourne, Victoria. Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

Elgee Park 2022 acrylic on paper 56.0 x 76.0 cm Represented by Australian Galleries, Melbourne and Sydney

My work is an intuitive response to nature and the built environment. I lived in the Central Australian desert for twenty-nine years where, in my work, I attempted to activate the feeling of being in the landscape, deconstructing and anthropomorphising it, challenging the human-centered viewpoint of nature while referencing restorative care and reparative action. Through layering textured marks, I create the irregularities and patterns of a world where nature is the major stakeholder. I try to create a form of ‘spacial’ harmony: a place of refuge, as nature does. A fundamental aspect of my work is responding to the brilliant glare of the Australian light and its effect on land formations. In a recent series of work I responded to the built environment in New York City. Since moving to Melbourne in April 2021 I continue to be influenced by the natural environment as seen in Elgee Park.

CYRUS TANG b. 1969, Hong Kong; arr. Australia 2003. Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

Almost Home – 2 2022 pigment print 80.0 x 80.0 cm Represented by Arc One Gallery, Melbourne

My art practice reflects sentiments of nostalgia through translation of disappearance into remembrance and fantasy. It reflects my examination of the paradox of reconstructing ephemeral mental images and sensations in permanent materials. I started this project during the lockdown in 2020. I began to observe the landscape and its changes in my neighbourhood and started to take photographs every day. Producing this series involved the repetition of the photographs with similar composition or motifs. This kind of repetition is a contemplation and it helps to increase the awareness of our being. All the motifs that I choose are the original scenery that we see every day. Building up the layering of images, submerging the original photos in order to create a new photo, is fascinating, like producing a painting with my computer and my photos.

SHERNA TEPERSON b. 1953, Cape Town, South Africa; arr. Australia 1983. Lives and works in Sydney, New South Wales

Air (breathing spell) 2021 300 gsm watercolour paper, PVA, air, pine, screen-board, varnish 162.0 x 63.0 cm

My work investigates surface and colour vibration to find the connections between materiality and sensory memory. I use 300 gsm watercolour paper to build small units that are then glued together to become large three-dimensional forms. I capture what is so elusive – air and time – within each unit, with paper being the mediating membrane between the air trapped inside and the air surrounding the work. Each ‘time capsule’ is a truncated octahedron, a paper-light geometric form, that is then assembled into clusters, reminiscent of the way that nature builds. Light and shadow falling across the surfaces help to slow vision down, to allow the viewer time to sense this complex geometry. The sculpture hovers on a lightweight wooden plinth, which is tessellated with mosaics crafted from screen-board. The figure/ ground relationship between these small tessellations and its highkeyed coloured background further precipitates the slowing down of vision.

CHERYL THORNTON b. 1948, Nhill, Victoria. Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

Expanding the grid 2021 woven tapestry 18.5 x 40.0 cm (diptych)

The initial work was made in response to a mini-textile exhibition Order or Chaos. Beyond chaos exists order: the significance of 9. The same format has sustained a series that has become an important component of a personal studio practice, in contrast to large-scale contract work at the Australian Tapestry Workshop. The weaving process has a vertical warp (red), while the weft (white) is woven under and over forming a structure that interlaces the two. White paper yarn, abaca, from Manila hemp fibre is made in Japan. Its challenges can be tamed if washed. This diptych explores the multiple of 9. One titled Silence the other Solitude. There are times when neither can exist without the other. These works are about ritual, quiet, stillness and simplicity; also about reverence, routine, repetition, rhythm.

COLUMBIERE TIPUNGWUTI b. 1965, Wurrumiya, Northern Territory. Language group: Tiwi. Lives and works in Milikapiti, Melville Island, Northern Territory

Japarra (Moonman) 2021 locally sourced natural earth pigments on paper 76.0 x 57.0 cm Jilamara Arts and Crafts Association, Northern Territory

Columbiere paints representations of the creation story figure Japarra (the Moonman). This central Tiwi narrative describes how one day Waiyai (the first mother) leaves Jinani (the first child) under a shade to be with her brother-in-law Japarra and the son dies of exposure. Distraught, Purukuparli (Jinani’s father) fights his brother Japarra, who ascends to become the moon while Purukuparli holds the first Pukumani (mourning ceremony) for his deceased son. Wayai became the curlew bird whose cries for her son can be heard at night to this day. Both Columbiere’s paintings of Japarra and his practice as a dancer present a window into elements of this central Tiwi story. Unlike Purukuparli and all Tiwi people when they dance at ceremony, the Japarra figure wears no ceremonial ornaments, body paint or clothes. He is suspended in limbo after bringing mortality to the Tiwi people. Many years ago, there was a strong Tiwi tradition of producing nude figurative ironwood carvings that tell this story. Columbiere’s paintings draw on these influences to create new works based on his knowledge of the old stories and connection to longstanding practices of visual storytelling.

JUSTINE VARGA b. 1984, Sydney, New South Wales. Lives and works in Sydney, New South Wales and Oxford, United Kingdom

Verdant 2021 chromogenic photograph 160.0 x 122.0 cm Represented by Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne

What is it we see when we view Verdant? Are we simply looking at handmade inscriptions transcribed onto a piece of photographic paper? Or are we being asked to look through and at that paper to something more complex? Verdant was made in a darkroom using an enlarger to project light through a drawn negative onto sensitised paper. The signs of that activity are evidenced in its green border. By casting the filtration of colour generated by the enlarger into this ‘no-mans-land’, I have complicated the relationship of centre to edge, perhaps even turned them inside out. This type of transgressive thinking, about borders and about hierarchies of seeing and feeling, extends from my photograph to the world it inhabits. Rendered simultaneously transparent and opaque, this is a piece of paper that invites viewers to look at that world anew, a verdant mode of art practice in every sense.

LISA WAUP

Family Tree 2022

My work uses symbology, hand-stitched text and materiality to create connections to family, Country, history and story. Individual letters from the word LOST are printed repetitively on top of one another at different intensities. The final stages of the prints made are so dense that they become a blackened void, until they too become LOST. This evokes a feeling of an experience of the unknown – unknown histories, unknown family, unknown connection.

multi-plate intaglio, somerset paper 650 gsm, charbonnel ink, cotton thread, hand-dyed fibre, cockatoo feathers, bush hen feathers 77.0 x 240.0 cm

Family Tree references both my family and many others who are part of a number of generations of lost, stolen, hidden and displaced First Peoples in Australia. These prints direct the viewer back to where ancestors can be found, implying that First Peoples never were and never will be LOST due to their cultural connection to the land.

b. 1971, Naarm. Language group: Gunditjmara. Lives and works in Naarm

KIM WESTCOTT b. 1968, Melbourne, Victoria. Lives and works in Taminick, Victoria

The Fallen 2021 indian ink on museum mount board 152.0 x 306.0 cm (triptych) Represented by MAGMA, Melbourne

The Fallen is inspired from a fallen tree in the Warby-Ovens National Park in Victoria. One day, I stumbled through thick bush in the ‘Warby’s’ in search of something. As nature speaks to me, I was feeling its pain. I saw the trees … the beautiful eucalypts that stretch to the sky and sometimes touch each other’s limbs. I noticed how the trees fracture the earth to connect to all that wants to communicate. These trees, in a forest, spread to the limits that are imposed upon them. But these days, the limits are pressurising them. They are stressed, and they are falling. This day, I stumbled across a magnificent gum tree. Lying horizontal, it was uprooted; it had let go, or been defeated. Yet to me it was also rising, it had formed an image of another connection. A connection you cannot see, but one that you feel.

PAUL WHITE b. 1976, Sydney, New South Wales. Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

Grounded 2021 pencil on paper 96.0 x 129.5 cm Represented by Scott Livesey Galleries, Melbourne

This coloured pencil on paper drawing depicts a discarded United Airlines passenger plane that is in the process of being stripped for parts. I captured this image in photographic form ten years ago while exploring the Californian desert. I have been interested in wrecking yards in relation to and as signifiers of the passing of time, the abandoned and obsolete. I am interested in the idea of the frozen moment and how these objects have seemingly been paused in time after a life of movement across the globe. This image of a dormant and broken plane became even more pertinent in Covid-affected life and the idea that we are literally grounded. When created we were restricted in our movements and unable to travel, at times no more than ten kilometres from home let alone internationally. It was interesting to revisit and explore this image in relation to this.

LAURA WILLIAMS b. 1986, Bunbury, Western Australia. Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

Between Breezes 2020 watercolour on paper, pencil, thread, card 45.0 x 90.0 x 10.0 cm

This work was inspired by walks around the grassland circle in Royal Park, Melbourne. With each breeze or gust of wind, the grasses move like a chorus and then collectively stop when the wind ceases. It is a strange place but I love that it feels like an ocean of dancing grasses and that it provides a rare horizon line in the middle of the city, allowing for reflection and stillness. In my art practice I am interested in capturing subtle details in the natural environment such as the movement of water and air or moments of stillness. The poetic Beaufort wind scale has been a continuing inspiration for my work and its ephemeral subject feels well-suited to the delicacy of watercolour and paper.

JOEL WOLTER b. 1978, Geelong, Victoria. Lives and works in Ocean Grove, Victoria

Underdog 2021 charcoal 28.0 x 38.0 cm

Fundamentally, I am a drawer who also works in printmaking and painting. Underdog depicts my young dog with his head buried in a pillowcase, as he so frequently likes to do with numerous forms of drapery. I believe this drawing represents our experiences over the past couple of years.

PEDRO WONAEAMIRRI b. 1974, Darwin, Northern Territory. Language group: Tiwi. Lives and works in Milikapiti, Melville Island, Northern Territory

Pwoja – Pukumani Body Paint Design 2021 locally sourced natural earth pigments on paper 57.0 x 76.0 cm Jilamara Arts and Crafts Association, Northern Territory

Pedro’s contemporary art practice has its foundations in yirrinkiripwoja – ‘design’ derived from ceremonial body painting and the ornate decoration applied to tutini poles, tunga (bark baskets) and associated objects made for the Pukumani (mourning) ceremony and Tiwi Yoyi (dance). Tiwi culture places special significance on the Pukumani ceremony. Mourners are decorated using natural ochres to disguise themselves from the spirit of the deceased, and song and dance is performed to honour the dead. Yirrinkiripwoja (body paint) is the source of many contemporary Tiwi designs closely connected to the performance of the Pukumani ceremony. Pedro continues to exclusively use ochres sourced from in and around his place of work in Milikapiti. He applies these colours of Tiwi Country with meticulously fine detail and tools used to apply decoration to the skin. ‘The designs are already in my head and I use the kayimwagakimi, our traditional wooden comb made from ironwood, and natural ochres from the island to paint.’ 87

MICHELLE WOODY MINNAPINNI b. 1974, Darwin, Northern Territory. Language: Tiwi. Lives and works in Milikapiti, Melville Island, Northern Territory

Ngiya Murrakupupuni (My Country) 2021 locally sourced natural earth pigments on paper 57.0 x 76.0 cm Jilamara Arts and Crafts Association, Northern Territory 88

Michelle paints using the kayimwagakimi comb – a toothed tool carved from locally harvested ironwood and used in ceremonial Tiwi body painting. She also works in natural ochres sourced on Country around Milikapiti. These materials are collected, crushed and burned into the three colours of the island landscape – white, yellow and red – to create contemporary representations of Murrakupupuni (Country). Her works are reminiscent of elements of the Tiwi Islands. These include winga (salt water), makatinga (flowing fresh water) and where the two meet in the tidal estuaries of the islands. ‘Artwork makes me think about the wulimawi (old people)… like going out on Country, same feeling. It makes me feel emotional, makes me think about my Ancestors and how they used to live. We need to keep that culture alive through art, ceremony and spending time on Country.’

TIGER YALTANGKI b. 1973, Pukatja (Ernabella), South Australia. Language group: Yankunytjatjara. Lives and works in Indulkana, South Australia

AC/DC 2021 acrylic paint on paper and found poster 76.0 x 112.0 cm Represented by Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne

A compulsive drawer and mark-maker, Tiger Yaltangki works every day at the Iwantja Arts centre, located in the remote Indigenous Community of Indulkana on the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands in northern South Australia. Tiger is largely non-verbal, so his artistic practice represents a vital means of self-expression. His vibrant and prolific artistic output is closely informed by his love of music, especially the guitar-worshipping hard rock of AC/DC. For this work, the artist has painted directly onto a found poster of his favourite band. Using brash acrylic colours, Tiger embellishes the portrait of Bon Scott, Angus Young and company, transforming the band members into mamu (Aṉangu spirit beings) in an electrifying mash-up of his traditional culture and love of rock ’n’ roll.

BELINDA YEE b. 1970, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory. Lives and works in Sydney, New South Wales

Marking time with you 2022 ink on paper 83.5 x 60.0 cm

My mum died last year, and I struggled to find the space and quiet time to digest what had happened. I started a simple, low-engagement drawing to give myself the time and headspace I needed. It involved a simple process of marking cells across a page, looking only at a small section at a time. I made the work Marking time with you with headphones on, listening to the music of my childhood, thinking about the moments, experiences and conversations Mum and I had shared. The paper became a live space of engagement, a stage. As such, it holds the trace of time I spent with my mum across those hours and days. A seismograph of sorts, the small marks and clusters capture the flow of feelings and time. The work is now complete, but I’m not sure it is really finished.

GUTIŊARRA YUNUPIŊU b. 1997, Yirrkala, Northern Territory. Language group: Gumatj. Lives and works in Yirrkala, Northern Territory

Djältji Gawuṉu 2022 pencil on paper 78.0 x 107.0 cm

The beach at Buymarr is known as a Yilan for the great kingfish Ŋuykal. When it is the season for the great fish the people (men) go down to the beach to spear it when they see it. The original people are known as the Räŋgarr, Wutjunayŋu or Batha. The place itself is Buymarr, Garrapaḻaand Dhamuŋura. The beach is called Djältji Gawuṉu.

Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, Northern Territory