Welcome to Boorloo Contemporary
Perth Festival acknowledges the Noongar people who continue to practise values, language, beliefs and knowledge on kwobidak boodjar. Noongar people remain the spiritual and cultural birdiyangara of this place and we honour and respect the caretakers and custodians and the vital role Noongar people play for our community and our Festival to flourish. We also acknowledge all First Nations people, whose contributions make our Festival culturally and artistically richer. Our hearts are happy that you are here, on the traditional lands of Whadjuk, part of the Bibbulmun nation and its people.
In 2025 Boorloo Contemporary introduced a bold new platform for large-scale commissions and presentations, one that celebrates the work of First Nations artists from both here in Western Australia and beyond. This year’s Boorloo Contemporary commissions deepen the program’s commitment to artists who defy convention, those who move fluidly between mediums, who reimagine the structures of art-making and who bring their worlds into view. Through collaboration and fearless experimentation, Boorloo Contemporary contributes to reshaping the contemporary art landscape, both locally and globally. Wesfarmers is proud to play a part in supporting this important initiative that places culture and Country at the heart of Perth Festival. Discover innovative and immersive experiences that transform East Perth Power Station and Boorloo Bridge and take place inside galleries at PICA and PS Art Space.
Boorloo Contemporary is an opportunity to commission and present works at scale, predominantly from First Nations artists on this continent, and eventually including other artists in Australia’s immediate geographic region – works that speak both from and to our region in their own visual languages and connected narratives. It is important, and timely, that this new commissioning initiative is delivered in Western Australia, which is uniquely positioned in relation to Southeast Asia considering proximity and shared time zones. These diverse geographic regions encompass a vast range of countries and languages from the largest Aboriginal language group in Australia – the Noongar People in the Southwest – to remote communities and beyond to First Nations and other artists across the Indian Ocean Rim. Stemming from ongoing conversations between curators, artists and arts workers, Boorloo Contemporary emerged as a dynamic platform dedicated to amplifying the voices and creative expressions of First Nations artists. Rooted on Whadjuk Boodjar in Boorloo/Perth, the initiative will grow to rekindle connections with peers across the Southeast Asia and Asia Pacific regions, fostering a rich and interconnected cultural dialogue. Boorloo Contemporary champions a wide range of artistic practices, emphasising the work of artists who challenge conventions, transcend boundaries and reimagine possibilities within and without traditional arts institutions. By creating space for innovative and experimental approaches, the platform not only highlights underrepresented perspectives but also contributes to reshaping the global arts landscape through collaboration, inclusivity and bold creativity. The program will delve deeply into a variety of creative dimensions in the coming years, including the transformative interplay of light and sound, the power and intimacy of ceremony and the rich tradition of storytelling as a means of cultural connection. These offerings will unfold through a series of exhibitions, performances and events – some hosted in traditional art galleries, others taking place in unexpected locations throughout the city.
Helen Carroll , Wesfamers Arts
Perth Festival Noongar Cultural Authority Council Roma Yibiyung Winmar, Vivienne Binyarn Hansen, Richard Walley, Barry McGuire & Mitchella Waljin Hutchins
Anna Reece , Perth Festival Artistic Director Chloe Ogilvie , Perth Festival Artistic Associate
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Lance Chadd Tjyllyungoo Power Station Commission
Bibbulmun Noongar and Budimia Yamatji artist Lance Chadd Tjyllyungoo is one of the most senior and significant Noongar artists alive. He is renowned for his breathtaking depictions of Australian landscapes that skilfully weave First Nations spiritual beliefs and stories of connection into images of physical landforms. Paintings of this Country, wetlands to hills, often collating past, present and future into one scene, elegantly unveil a perspective the world needs. Tjyllyungoo has painted professionally since 1981, with his works celebrated both nationally and internationally. His theme is, and always has been, about connection. He believes his word ‘culture’ means connection of all forms of life and their symbiotic relationships, infused by Wirin (spirit) we call life and kept in reverence via song, dance, art, ceremony and lore. For this Power Station Commission the creative team, led by Tjyllyungoo and including Nigel Chadd and Trish Robinson in collaboration with digital artist Sam Price of What’s This Studio and creative producer Yabini Kickett, have thoughtfully curated a selection of Tjyllyungoo’s signature landscapes. These artworks speak deeply of Country, memory and ancestral presence. Together
they transform East Perth Power Station into a portal where colour and story spill across its solid architecture. This large-scale presentation celebrates Tjyllyungoo’s unique visual language while inviting audiences to feel surrounded by the spirit of place, creating a powerful connection to Noongar culture and Country. The selected works are deeply connected to the ground on which the Power Station stands, bringing the smallest of creatures to the forefront and celebrating their roles in keeping Country healthy. Boorloo is the name for a specific wetland that lies within the Perth CBD, although now affectionately used to refer to the wider Perth region. Boorloo as we know it today, is built upon many freshwater wetlands that have long provided food, medicines and gathering space for ceremony and celebration, and are home to Noongar Mob. Kwooyar/Koya/Kwidjar are all names for frogs within Noongar Boodjar – several of which are still found in Boorloo and nearby seasonal wetlands. Their presence signifies clean water and a healthy eco system. The frogs are often first to leave when environments become
polluted or uninhabitable. Tjyllyungoo has painted them for decades, acknowledging their role here and as a familial district totem. They feature heavily in the projections to remind viewers of the little ones, the kin, working diligently close to the ground, who sing after boorong, thankful for the water. The projections also feature a number of burning Karraduk (Balga stems). This represents an old story about how fire came to the Bibbulmen people. Life before fire. Koora Koora, a time long before the Ngyiddiny (Ice Age).
Kwotalbur – (sparrow hawk) and Wota – (bronze winged pigeon) were Konk (uncle) and Moya (nephew). They decided to take the fire from Meeka while he slept. They then put the fire high in all the trees. Meeka awoke, cold and angry and when he saw the fire he called out to Wordarn the great ocean, who was his Konk. Wordarn spread over Boodjar and put out the fire. Wota was boolbaitj (clever) and put the fire high in the trees and stem of the Balga flower. Now Meeka is always cold (Ngyddiny Meeka) – cold because he was greedy and refused to share. Karraduk was used traditionally for friction fire lighting and is still used today.’ The Balga is a powerful symbol of resistance, continuity and adaptation. They stand as a reminder that survival is not passive – it’s an active living persistence.
The following story is generously shared by Tjyllyungoo:
‘Balga (grass tree) is our ‘Fire Tree’. Karrak, (red tailed cockatoo) was responsible for teaching us how to get fire from Karraduk (the flower stem of the Balga.) In the Ngyiddiny, the Bibbulmun people had no fire. Only Meeka (the moon) had fire kept in his tail and would not give it to the Nyoongarah (men).
A Boorloo Contemporary commission for Perth Festival supported by
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Kait James Blak Flags
The idea for the flags grew naturally out of my broader practice of reclaiming everyday objects that carry cultural, political and historical weight. Flags are powerful symbols. They are used to claim land, signal identity, celebrate, warn and commemorate, and they have long been tools of authority, particularly in colonial contexts. For my previous exhibition Red Flags , I focused on souvenir felt pennant flags that were popular throughout the 1970s and ‘80s. These were mass-produced and sold in most major towns across the country, celebrating what places were known for while ignoring the true histories of those places and their Traditional Owners. I began creating my own versions, embedding political and pop- cultural references that spoke to Country and acted as reminders of what has happened on the land we are all standing on. Works such as ‘You Are on Stolen Land’, ‘Still Here’, ‘Invasion’, ‘Unsettled’, ‘Land Back’, and ‘Whose Country Are You On?’ emerged from this series. Blak Flags builds on this body of work and I created three new Perth-specific flags. I find it much harder to make work for places I am not from. This is not my Country and I haven’t spent much time here, so it was
important for me to visit Boorloo, meet with Traditional Owners and Elders, listening and learning to the history and spending time exploring the area. During my visit, a few things stood out to me and unexpectedly, one of them was the bore water stains. The power poles outside my hotel were marked with these beautiful orange gradients, reminiscent of the beautiful sunsets you all enjoy right along the west coast. At first I thought they were decorative, but I was even more drawn to them when I realised they were created by bore water, something we don’t have in Naarm/ Melbourne. Our earth is different, made up of different dirt. These stains became quiet reminders of Country, much like what I wanted the flags themselves to be. To reference the bore water stains I’m so fond of, I used a gradient of colour on both the ‘Koort Moort’ and ‘Boyli’ flags. I also loved seeing both the similarities and differences between our languages and stories. Seeing crows and black swans in Boorloo were reminders of my own Country. The crow ( Wardong in Noongar, Wah in Wadawurrung) is a Wadawurrung moiety, and the black swan ( Maali in Noongar, Kunuwarra in Wadawurrung)
is found throughout Wadawurrung Country. Both are important figures in our Wadawurrung creation story, and it was so interesting to hear and read about their significance in Noongar culture. Rather than creating overtly political or activist flags for Perth Festival, I wanted to focus on celebrating local mob. When meeting Traditional Owners in Boorloo, I was struck by the strength, power and resilience of the local community and how formidable they are. The phrase ‘Big Mob Energy’ immediately came to mind. Like many places across Australia, Boorloo is home to mob from all over. Not just Whadjuk, not just Noongar, many different Nations now live here (even some Wadawurrung!). That is why I wanted to incorporate all the colours from both the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags in the ‘Big Mob Energy’ work. Like in Boorloo, we need this kind of Big Mob Energy everywhere and always. ‘Koort Moort’, “heart family” in Noongar, is a phrase that feels deeply fitting, not only for Whadjuk Noongar people, but for all mob. We heart our families. ‘Boyli’, meaning power or strength, references both the strength of mob
and the Power Station itself. Given this is a site specific work, I wanted to reference the area in some way. I am drawn to the way flags act as markers of ownership and authority, particularly within colonial histories, and I use this form to subvert that language. By reworking flags, I aim to challenge what is celebrated, what is erased and whose stories are made visible. Within the Festival context, the flags speak to gathering, visibility and public space. They operate as bold visual statements that are immediately legible from a distance, while carrying layered references to history, Country and ongoing sovereignty. I acknowledge the late, great artist and activist Destiny Deacon, who first coined the term Blak. Like many First Nations people, Destiny grew up being subjected to racist slurs, including being called “black c**t”. In response, she reclaimed the word by removing the ‘c’ from black and, as she often joked, removing the ‘c’ from the insult as well. Blak, unlike Black, became Destiny’s way of self- determining identity, defined from within rather than imposed from outside. To me, Blak is not simply about the colour of one’s skin, but about identity, agency and a deep sense of belonging.
Kait James
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A Boorloo Contemporary commission for Perth Festival supported by Wesfarmers Arts
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Melissa Sandy The Void
Tyrown Waigana Kwop Ben Good Light
It’s so hard when you lose someone you love. The Void series is all about Mum. It’s the void that Mum left in our hearts and in our lives when we lost her. Which is a very large void. You feel like you have to learn to live again. There’s no more phone calls, no more laughter, no more making her cups of tea, you know? Sitting down with her and just hearing her speak. Those beautiful things that we all loved about her. There’s no more of that. All we’ve got is memories. When people walk through my exhibition, they need to know why it came about. It’s because of her. Losing her. Losing Mum. You see your family in so much pain. You go through so much pain, and you try so hard to help everyone else through the pain and you’re just stuck in your own little bubble, and that pain just sits there and sits there. And I’m so happy that I’m an artist because I get to express it through my art. If I didn’t have my art, I don’t know what I would do. I would just go mad. I hope this series will help people like it’s helped me, like I hope it’s going to help my family when they see it. It’s moving forward, it’s letting go. You’re still missing that person, but you learn to move on. So, my paintings start
off quite dark, and then they gradually go lighter because the pain starts to subside. Life goes on, but any little thing can bring a memory back you know? There’s no forgetting anybody that you lose. That is the outcome that I want in this exhibition, that is what is important. To help my family, my community, everybody – anybody who has lost someone they love. I want them to not only experience my journey, I want them to experience their own journey. They could have lost someone years ago, months ago, it doesn’t matter. But I want them to be able to walk through my exhibition and actually let go of some pain. I want to be able to help people through grief. Melissa Sandy Written 2025 for The Void , Melissa Sandy’s first solo exhibition, created in tribute to her late Aunt (who in Yindjibarndi culture is considered her mother), respected artist and Elder Mrs. A. Sandy
Kwop Ben, meaning ‘Good Light’, is an animated light work that takes over Boorloo Bridge, transforming one of Perth’s newest and most recognisable crossings into a living digital canvas. The work explores place, protest and connection, celebrating the river as a powerful thread linking past, present and future. Guided by the knowledge of Noongar cultural leaders Richard Walley and Herbie Bropho, Kwop Ben draws on stories held within the river and the lands it moves through. Known as Matagarup, the bridge site carries deep cultural significance as a place of ceremony and gathering, as well as a history marked by activism and resistance. It is also one of the few places where yonga (kangaroos) continue to live on Country within the heart of the city, a reminder of the ongoing relationship between people, place and the natural world. As night falls, the bridge’s lighting system is reimagined as an animated artwork, activated through digital design and animation by Wandandi Noongar artist Tyrown Waigana.
Colour, movement and imagery ripple across the structure, bringing the bridge to life in rhythm with the river below. Pelicans, turtles, dolphins and other river life emerge alongside symbolic forms and transformations, creating a flowing visual language that speaks to memory, resilience and renewal. The work moves through moments of loss and survival, hope and healing. The Wagyl, the sacred serpent of Noongar stories, winds through light and water, connecting the spiritual, cultural and natural worlds. Rainbows, water spirits and acts of quiet resistance appear and dissolve, honouring those who have come before and the strength that endures through generations. By honouring the ‘good light’ and carrying the stories of Matagarup onto Boorloo Bridge, Kwop Ben honours the Country we live on and shares these stories with all who move through the city.
A Boorloo Contemporary commission for Perth Festival supported by
A Boorloo Contemporary commission for Perth Festival supported by Wesfarmers Arts Presented with Yinjaa-Barni Art and PS Art Space
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April Phillips and Friends with Computers Under Waters
Darrell Sibosado Niman Aarl (Many Fish)
You’re invited into a speculative oceanic world, imagining Earth three billion years ago when water covered the continent. Created by Wiradjuri/Scottish artist April Phillips, recipient of PICA’s inaugural boorda yeyi Immersive Arts Commission, Under Waters was developed on Gadigal and Yuin Country and produced on Whadjuk Noongar Boodjar with Pat Younis and Jordan East (Friends with Computers). Within the bounds of a circular enclosure, a room within a room, visitors step into an immersive environment that responds slowly, almost imperceptibly, to their presence. As people move in and within the space it triggers subtle shifts, encouraging a sense of care and attentiveness. The work unfolds in cycles, alternating between oceanic and celestial worlds. Deep-water canyons, coral seas and rich kelp forests give way to an infinite galactic sky of stars and nebula, a reminder that water and sky are kin. As bodies shift, transformations ripple through space. Saltwater Country
thrives with drifting jellyfish, migrating life forms and ancient marine snails inspired by fossil scans, anchoring the experience in ecological memory while opening dreaming and imagined universes. Under Waters uses extended reality (XR) not as spectacle but as a mode of digital storytelling. Motion-tracking cameras read the body and feed real-time changes into the environment – yet human control remains elusive. Grounded in First Nations knowledge systems, the work reflects freshwater and saltwater perspectives where people and Country are inseparable. A sensory and restorative experience, Under Waters calls audiences to recognise our shared reliance on the systems that sustain life and to imagine futures beyond the present. ‘Resting in deep time opens our spirit to imagine ultimate futures.’ – April Phillips
‘Country isn’t just the land you walk on. It’s the waves, the animals, the trees, the noises you hear in the wind, and the ocean whispering all the time.’ – Darrell Sibosado
His large-scale installation reflects on relationships between Makassans and First Peoples of the Kimberley – connections often overlooked by narratives centred on Arnhem Land. Using pearl shell he draws attention to these expansive networks of exchange, where water was both a route and a cultural connector. The work invites audiences to consider how these histories ripple into the present, shaping identity and belonging. Niman Aarl (Many Fish) exemplifies this approach. Created with nephews DJ and Eric Sibosado, it comprises hundreds of hand-carved fish from mother-of-pearl, trochus, ebony and turtle shell –materials traded for centuries. ‘I saw a fish in the trochus shell. It didn’t need to be made, it was already there. So we made more. A whole school’, Darrell reflects. This poetic gesture speaks to continuity and adaptation, as cultural knowledge flows across generations.
Darrell Sibosado is a Goolarrgon Bard man from Lombadina on the Dampier Peninsula, Western Australia. He holds senior standing as a cultural leader and his practice is a dialogue between Bard cultural traditions and contemporary art forms. Darrell’s Boorloo Contemporary commission for Awakening Histories begins with the riji, mother-of-pearl ceremonial plates worn by Bard men. These intricate carvings, passed down through generations, tell stories of connection to land and sea. Traditionally enhanced with ochre and resin, they embody knowledge systems that have endured for millennia. Darrell reimagines these designs in large-scale light sculptures and etchings, transforming ancient motifs into luminous forms that command space and attention.
Awakening Histories presented with Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts in association with Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne. Darrell Sibosado’s work co-commissioned by PICA and Perth Festival for Boorloo Contemporary supported by Wesfarmers Arts.
Presented with Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts as part of their boorda-yeyi program. A Boorloo Contemporary co-commission
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Welcome to Perth Festival 2026 Exhibitions program
Perth Festival’s Exhibitions program this year moves like tides: pulling distant time into the now and pushing our sense of place, authorship and belonging into unfamiliar waters. Across galleries and spaces throughout the city, these works invite a gentle kind of attention. The program is bound by a set of shared enquiries. Several artists begin with land, with regions where a comparatively recent colonial chapter has left outsized marks on environment and community, and where the evidence of that disruption still sits in plain sight. Others look outward to the Indian Ocean as a living memory system, a map of routes, crossings, labour, trade and cultural exchange that has braided worlds together for centuries. First Nations’ perspectives deepen this oceanic frame, speaking to long histories of contact and adaptation, to relationships with visitors and with what travelled here – objects, plants, languages and ideas, arriving and being transformed. As you make your way around our city’s galleries, you’ll also encounter works that foreground inheritance and responsibility. A remarkable group of drawings is presented in public for the first time, carrying knowledge held and transmitted by cultural leaders, custodians and families connected to the original makers. Elsewhere, new sculptural forms are built through processes of sampling and reconstruction, fragments taken apart, recombined and made strange again. Painting is similarly reoriented
through East and Southeast Asian viewpoints, loosening the dominance of Western conventions and expanding the medium’s logic, rhythm and reference points. Together, these exhibitions offer a field of relationships – between past and present, between shoreline and inland, between what is remembered and what has been suppressed, between the local and the transnational. They invite us to stay with ambiguity, to notice the layers and to accept that understanding can be partial, emotional and still profoundly real. This program exists because of collaboration and trust between the Festival, artists, curators, galleries, fabricators, installers and producers, and the many people who do the detailed, often invisible, work that allows art to be experienced at its fullest. On behalf of the Festival we are grateful for these partnerships and for the ambition, care and rigour across every project – all in the support of these exceptional artists that we are honoured to collectively present. Take these exhibitions at your own pace. Drift, return, double back. Like our ocean, how you experience it is never the same; it keeps moving and it meets each of us differently.
Awakening Histories
Awakening Histories explores pre-colonial international relations between First Nations peoples of Australia and Southeast Asian seafarers from Makassar in South Sulawesi, Indonesia. The exhibition features new artwork commissions and key loans by 27 artists and collectives whose works share stories of migration, trade and cultural exchange. These artworks highlight the roles of trepang (sea cucumber), trochus and turtle shells, tamarind trees, palm wine, textiles and praus (sailing vessels) in histories shared across the ocean. Through stories and song, they map interactions that have taken place across the north of this continent—from the Gulf of Carpentaria around Arnhem Land to Garamilla/Darwin (an area known as Marege to the sailors from Makassar) and beyond to the Kayu Djawa/Kimberley region. Among the exhibition’s new commissions is a photography installation by Makassan artist Aziziah Diah Aprilya, Under the Tamarind Tree (2025). In South Sulawesi, the tamarind tree is a living archive of cultural memory – its shade a space for gathering and its fruit essential to Makassan cooking. Completed while on residency in Perth as part of PICA’s BREEZE: Makassar-Perth
Artist-in-Residence Exchange program in 2025, Aziziah’s work traces the tamarind’s journey from South Sulawesi to northern Australia, where it became entwined in First Nations mourning practices and memory. Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, a Western Australian-based artist, draws on his Bugis ancestry to explore shared waters and spiritual archetypes. His drawing and sculptural practice, showcased in Awakening Histories with a carved crocodile Tanpa Sempadan (Without Borders) , interrogates borders – both physical and imagined. Through animal forms that traverse cultural and ecological worlds, Abdul-Rahman traces connections across time and legacy; celebrating the passing of knowledge through families and generations. Awakening Histories honours First Nations peoples’ longstanding histories of encounter and interaction with communities, technologies and ideas from across the seas. It foregrounds Indigenous sovereignty and ocean-centred storytelling, inviting audiences to celebrate Australia’s pre-colonial international relations from a global south perspective, and the lasting connections forged through reciprocity, respect and trade.
Anna Reece , Perth Festival Artistic Director
Thanks to our Presentation Partners
Presented with Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts in association with Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne
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Pascale Giorgi Worst Hits
Jon Chan, Un Cheng, Chris Huen Sin-Kan, Noor Mahnun, Tang Dixin Painting Itself / 绘画本身
Painting Itself/ 绘画本身 brings together five painters whose practices span Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Shanghai. Curated by Jonathan Nichols, the exhibition invites audiences to encounter painting as a global conversation, shaped by diverse contexts and histories. Painting Itself/ 绘画本身 foregrounds painting and painters as forming an interconnecting ‘horizontal culture’, where the principal encounter with painting and its history are made by artists themselves. Painting is treated as a living, adaptive form rather than a fixed language. Each artist leans into the mood and character of their work, allowing the painting to set its own terms. In doing so, they find what Jonathan Nichols calls “the face of the painting” – that moment when the work looks back at its maker. Jon Chan’s paintings explore Singapore’s civic spaces, layering fragments drawn from media and memory into terrains of green and fractured ground. His works hover between political gesture and quiet observation, asking what persists when rhetoric falls away. Un Cheng’s paintings, rooted in Hong Kong’s compressed urban life,
combine vibrant colour and layered textures with scenes drawn from everyday encounters. Through a process of scratching, layering and improvisation, she transforms ordinary moments into psychic landscapes, charged with movement and solitude. Noor Mahnun brings rigorous structure and cultural memory into dialogue with contemporary aesthetics; her works are marked by precision and poise. Tang Dixin’s paintings oscillate between figuration and abstraction and often carry a theatrical charge. Works such as Human Mountain evoke monuments and collective memory, yet remain deliberately ambiguous, holding intimacy and estrangement, permanence and flux in tension. Chris Huen Sin-Kan’s fluid compositions dissolve boundaries between figure and environment, often depicting moments of recognition between viewer and subject. As Huen reflects: ‘Painting is about living – it’s not something up in the air.’ This sense of painting as inseparable from life resonates with the exhibition’s premise: that paintings are not like everyday objects, they carry a vitality we more readily associate with people.
Many years ago, when I took my Northern English grandmother to PICA to see my work, she laughed. Not at my work, mind you, but at a video by Pascale Giorgi, where her father sings a Latin translation of Joe Dolce’s Shaddap You Face against a green-screened landscape of Italian architecture and iconography. My grandmother laughed, well, really, I should say that we both laughed, twice. First, at Pascale’s fine-tuned, at times acerbic but affable, sense of humour at play in the video. Then the second laugh came about due to a coincidence: my grandmother used to sing to my brother and me an abridged version of Shaddap You Face when we were much younger, in moments of angsty fussiness. This is a dear and fond memory and recalls the many works of British absurdism my grandmother introduced to us (and often performed for us): Monty Python, The Young Ones, Blackadder, The Mighty Boosh and so on. There was something so very Eric Idle about my Northern grandmother implementing Dolce’s song as a nursery rhyme.
This first encounter with Pascale’s work, a decade ago, at the 2016 Hatched graduate exhibition, of which we are both now alumni, demonstrates what is at once so clever and considered in her practice broadly: the way that humour and its associated props, icons and symbols cuts across cultural memory and time. Her solo exhibition, Worst Hits , applies this ethos to an act of self-remix. In this collection of new ceramic works, sketches, ideas relegated to the back burner, experiments and non-starters are dredged up into an auto-theoretical survey of her own interests, subjects and tendencies. This is itself a comedic effort of vainglorious ‘celebration’, but one built in with its own various foils and conceits, resulting in a self-effacing and communal body of work that invites a Duchenne smile and laughter stemming from the ancient veins of humour that undergird culture and history itself.
Paul Boyé, Goolugatup Gallery Curator
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Presented with Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts in association with Drill Hallery Gallery, ANU
Presented with Goolugatup Heathcote
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Brad Rimmer Loom of the Land
Summer
You cannot be untouched by a landscape of absence – an unforgiving land of mallee and eucalyptus woodlands and red earth on the edge of the grain belt, where decades of over-cropping and drought create continual struggle. I was working on the wheat bins in Western Australia’s eastern Wheatbelt region, where I grew up, between finishing high school and the timeless question of ‘Should I stay or should I leave?’. The question was ever-present – part of finding your place in a small, rural fringe community. It is our history, all of it, including the long-term effects of a single action on subsequent generations. How does our history, our experiences and our emotions, shape us? How do we arrive at a time in our lives when we can find a comfortable balance between looking back and looking ahead? How does our sensory archive collect sounds, music, smells, colours, shapes and the tiniest details to trigger memories, almost cinematically?
This forms the basis of a personal visual and written narrative drawn from the cultural idiosyncrasies of place, identity, belonging and memory, as I return to the Western Australian Wheatbelt where I grew up. Loom of the Land engages a quiet, contemplative tone, examining the tensions within remote communities – their resilience, solitude and accumulated histories. Over 20 years, the work has evolved into a personal reflection on the Wheatbelt that formed me, rooted in an insistence on the integrity and truth of place. In photographing this region, I offer a return of sorts, acknowledging how deeply we remain bound to our origins through memory, shared experience and the persistent pull of place.
He spent most of the day perched high up on the elevator platform. Out of reach from the flies and the intense heat coming off the tarmac that surrounded the remote wheat bin, a white concrete cocoon in the sea of red dirt. He made a comfortable seat cut out of an old foam mattress left in the donga. He joined lengths of bail twine to hoist supplies up and down in a bucket. He was afraid of heights and the narrow ladders made him nervous. From his perch he could see the scale of the vast, flat, wheatbelt landscape, bound within its sharp horizon. In the distance, large granite outcrops protrude like blisters. Abstractions of pure white saltpans creep like a cancer slowly across the land, cleared by men with broken bodies and souls attempting to domesticate the wilderness.
After harvest the stubble turns from nutritious gold to dull yellow. Then eventually fading to lifeless grey, it is burned, then ploughed back into the red earth for the cycle to begin again. From above, the bush looks exhausted under the monotonous bleached sky. Late in the hot summer afternoon a few puffy clouds appear, as if to tease the thirsty landscape, their shadows swooning over the earth. He craved for the relief of a thunderstorm. In the scrub next to the silo lies the proposed Bonnie Rock town site. Gazetted in 1932, the remains of four cleared blocks and surrounding streets, now only faintly recognisable from above. A new town, plans of promise; a school, general store and train station. It never happened. And decades later, nature has slowly resurrected, growing over ambitions and memories. Only the one building completed, a sad wooden hall, once used for dances and celebrations, stands quiet and alone.
The landscape never forgets.
Brad Rimmer Excerpts taken from Nature Boy
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Presented with Walyalup Fremantle Arts Centre
in Perth through engagement with the local community. Comprising thousands of small organza bags filled with citrus leaves and infused with frankincense and essential oils, the installation fills the gallery with what Thania describes as “smells that recall a thousand places”. When she was first invited to exhibit at the John Curtin Gallery, Thania Petersen expressed a desire to connect with Yolŋu musicians, extending a sound project that had already taken her to Tunisia, India and Indonesia. She was aware of the centuries- old relationship between Makassan traders from South Sulawesi and the Yolŋu people – a relationship that predates the exile of her ancestor Tuan Guru, an Indonesian prince who was banished to South Africa by the Dutch in the late 1700s. In September 2025 Thania spent a week in Makassar collaborating with Yolŋu and Makassan elders and musicians who hold knowledge of their shared histories. Over the course of the trip, she made dozens of recordings, searching for a tangible sonic link to a collective past carried through song. She encountered a chant performed in Cape Town, Makassar and Arnhem Land – the connection she had been seeking. These recordings anchor her new multi- channel sound work, Jieker, named for a Cape Muslim expression of the Arabic dhikr, meaning ‘to remember.’ With significant contributions from Yolŋu and Makassan collaborators, and a rich visual culture to draw from, it felt important in developing this project to represent the historical connections between northern Australia and south-eastern Indonesia. The exhibition Dhomala (meaning sail) explores the exchange of culture, language, song and story that has shaped this relationship since pre-colonial times. For centuries, Makassan seafarers travelled from the port of Makassar to Marege (Arnhem Land) to harvest trepang, living for months alongside Yolŋu people. Through trade, intermarriage and shared labour, cultural and spiritual practices became intertwined – connections that Yolŋu and Makassan communities continue to honour today.
Sail-making and oceanic travel are celebrated in Dhomala through historic and contemporary works. Senior Yolŋu artist Margaret Rarru Garrawurra creates dhomola from pandanus and kurrajong fibre through a technology passed down through generations. Her video Dhomola Dhäwu (2020), shown alongside an etching of a prau, is presented with a hand-woven sail created by Makassan artisans, anchoring the gallery installation. Other works explore the ongoing significance of this history, including Djambanpuy Dhawu (The Tamarind Story) (2023), a stop-motion animation created by Milingimbi Art & Culture. Historical objects – including rare pandanus sails and a 1947 crayon drawing depicting a Makassan boat and cargo – further testify to enduring cultural and linguistic exchange. Alongside trade in goods, language and culture, deep friendships formed between Yolŋu and Makassans, and blood ties were made through intermarriage. These connections were abruptly severed with the enactment of legislation that effectively banned trade with Asia, and the last Makassan prau left Australia in 1907. Decades later, Australia’s segregationist policies would influence the racist legislation of apartheid in South Africa. While these historical legacies continue to shape both countries, the artists in this exhibition resist being defined by colonial narratives. In recent years, Thania Petersen has turned her attention to emerging ideological threats, drawing on spiritual traditions of song as a source of universal love that resists confinement to colonised spaces. In a contemporary world increasingly marked by disconnection and loneliness, artists are calling us home through the shared celebration of song. Thania Petersen questions how we can restore our old friendships, our old stories and our old connections. Through her immersive artworks she invites us to “surrender to a rhythm that comes from beyond linear time”, to turn to the liberation of music.
Thania Petersen’s Jawap / Dhomala A call and response across the ocean
A call and response across the ocean brings together living histories of the Indian Ocean, reuniting friendships and kin ties that were severed through transglobal acts of colonisation. For Thania Petersen, the ocean is a site of collective memory through which she traces the migration of Sufi music, a living archive of song that offers a framework of liberation. Through Sufi song, Thania maps the Indian Ocean as a pathway of return, reconstructing historical routes in an effort to reunite what colonialism severed. This idea is central to her new film JAWAP (2025). In a Cape Muslim context, jawap refers to an invitation to communal prayer through song, deriving from the Indonesian word jawab, meaning ‘to answer’. With sumptuous, at times psychedelic, visuals and a five-channel soundtrack, the film resists linear time, proposing a cyclical landscape where past and future selves nurture their own evolution. Shown with JAWAP is Thania’s immersive installation Rampies Sny . Previously realised in Cape Town and Tunisia, this olfactory installation has been created
‘Sound holds our memory. When you decode these sounds you can hear time, you can hear place, you can hear people from a different land. There was a time when we sang together, otherwise how could we know each other’s songs, each other’s melodies. How would these melodies have transferred from one continent to another? There is no way we have been separate our whole existence. Because we sing the same songs. We sing the same songs.
How?’
– Thania Petersen
Lia McKnight , Curator John Curtin Gallery
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Presented with the John Curtin Gallery
Gracie Greene It’s Time!
Birrundudu Drawings
Some of this is tarruku (sacred and restricted). But tarruku is safe beneath (the drawings). People can’t see that.
Artist Gracie Greene experienced enormous social change over the course of her life and developed a unique visual language that incorporated desert cultural knowledge and Christian narratives. A major figure in the development of the Balgo art movement, Gracie resolved a distinct style that fulfilled her responsibility to impart knowledge that she gained from both her Balgo Hills Mission upbringing and the traditional stories that related to Country on which she lived in Balgo Hills and her parent’s Country. While living in communities including Balgo, Wangkajanka and Fitzroy Crossing, Gracie Greene worked to enhance cross-cultural understandings via her multiple roles – as parent, teacher, author, Elder and artist. She was not only an innovator herself, but through her use of the dotting practice she enabled the development of so many other innovations in Balgo art that would come in the years ahead. By the mid to late-1980s, she was recognised as an important artist and teacher within the community. She was a member of the steering group that established the new Culture Centre at Balgo, which was the foundation upon which Warlayirti Artists Aboriginal Corporation was later established. Balgo is located on the path of the Luurnpa, which terminates at Uluru, and
in late 1985, men from the Balgo community selected Gracie’s painting of the Luurnpa (Kingfisher) Dreaming to mark the Australian Federal Government’s historic return of Uluru-Kata Tjuta to Anangu. Painting was one of the ways that the artist consistently represented herself via affiliations at a cultural cross-over point. Through word and image, Gracie Greene asserted her agency in her distinctive presentation of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal stories. Hers is a highly sophisticated and contemporary artistic practice and she is generous in providing points of access into her paintings that utilise Desert iconography and Catholic narratives to resonate in contemporary society for community, for non-Kukatja speakers and younger generations. Lynley Nargoodah , Mangkaja Arts Lee Kinsella , Cruthers Collection of Women ’ s Art Excerpt from the exhibition catalogue essay
This intensified production entailed significant cultural exchange between the men involved, including senior men who informed the drawing process, as they negotiated protocols across age, experience, language and custodial responsibilities, and shared their stories with each other as they experimented in a new medium. Ronald Berndt’s neat annotations on each work, attempt to understand and translate fractions of this knowledge for outsiders. The re-emergence of the Birrundudu Drawings followed four years of collaborative research involving more than 40 cultural authorities, descendants, academics, researchers, advisors and museum workers. The research team visited the communities of Balgo, Billiluna, Halls Creek, Kalkarindji (Wave Hill), Lajamanu, Yuendumu and Mparntwe (Alice Springs) to share the collection with the artists’ descendants and others connected to its cultural content. Birrundudu Drawings showcases over 100 works on paper, none of which have been exhibited before, as well as a contemporary response by artist Jimmy Tchooga. The scale and complexity of the exhibition is transformative to understandings of Aboriginal art and Australian social history, but is most importantly, part of unfolding cultural legacies.
We only share the top story, for kids, women, everyone.
– Jerry Jangala
The Birrundudu Drawings represent a monumental body of Aboriginal knowledge and creativity, emerging from desert communities that had converged at a remote cattle station. In 1945, anthropologists Ronald and Catherine Berndt were engaged to investigate labour conditions at Birrundudu, a large station owned by Vestey Brothers, which held a lease spanning the Northern Territory-Western Australian border. As the Berndts began to run out of the notepads and photographic film they were using to record the knowledge of Aboriginal men and women, some of the men who had observed Ronald sketching offered to produce their own representations, utilising a cache of brown paper and lumber crayons. Over a three-month period, amid starvation-level rations and horrific exploitation, a staggering 810 drawings were created by 16 men, depicting their extensive knowledge of Country, ancestral narratives, history, sites and ceremonies.
Presented with The Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art at Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery with support from Mangkaja Arts and The Berndt Museum
Presented with The Berndt Museum at Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery with support from The Berndt Research Foundation and Warlayirti Artists
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Boorloo Contemporary & Exhibitions details
Kait James (p4) Blak Flags 6 Feb – 1 May East Perth Power Station Thu – Sun from 7.45pm Images: Kait James, Blak Flags , 2026. Courtesy of the artist. Kait James is represented by Neon Parc, Melbourne
Brad Rimmer (p14) Loom of the Land 7 Feb – 26 Apr Walyalup Fremantle Arts Centre 10am – 5pm daily Official opening: Fri 6 Feb 6pm Images: Brad Rimmer, Mukinbudin Town Hall, Spring 2016 , NATURE BOY . Courtesy of the artist and Art Collective WA. Brad Rimmer, Allana’s place, Wyalkatchem, Autumn 2015 , NATURE BOY , archival pigment print. Courtesy of the artist and Art Collective WA. Walyalup Fremantle Arts Centre is supported by the WA Government Brad Rimmer is represented by Art Collective WA
Jon Chan, Un Cheng, Chris Huen Sin-Kan, Noor Mahnun, Tang Dixin Painting Itself / 绘画本身 (p12) 6 Feb – 29 Mar Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA) Tue – Sun 12pm – 5pm Image: Noor Mahnun, Homework , 2024. Courtesy of the artist and Yeo Workshop, Singapore.
April Phillips and Friends with Computers (p8) Under Waters 19 Feb – 29 Mar Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA) Tue – Sun 12pm – 5pm Image: April Phillips, Friends with Computers, Under Waters , 2025, artist interpretation, boorda yeyi Immersive Arts Commission, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA). Image courtesy of the artist. Supported by The Ian Potter Foundation, Fielman Foundation and Lotterywest
Tyrown Waigana Kwop Ben (p6) Good Light
6 Feb – 28 Feb Boorloo Bridge Mon – Sun from sunset – midnight (excluding Sat 14 & Tue 17 Feb) Image: Tyrown Waigana, Kwop Ben , 2026
Pascale Giorgi (p13) Worst Hits 8 Feb – 26 Apr Goolugatup Heathcote Tue – Sun 10am – 4pm Official opening: Sat 7 Feb 5pm Image: Pascale Giorgi, Worst Hits , 2025, Photo: Pascale Giorgi
Darrell Sibosado (p9) Niman Aarl (Many Fish) from Awakening Histories 6 Feb – 29 Mar Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA) Tue – Sun 12pm – 5pm
Awakening Histories (p11) 6 Feb – 29 Mar Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA) Tue – Sun 12pm – 5pm Images: Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, Tanpa Sempadan (Without Borders) , 2023, carved Jelutong wood, glass. Courtesy of the artist and Moore Contemporary, Perth.
Lance Chadd Tjyllyungoo (p2) Power Station Commission 6 Feb – 1 Mar East Perth Power Station Thu – Sun from 7.45pm Images: Lance Chadd Tjyllyungoo, Frog Dreaming, 2005 . Courtesy of the artist. Lance Chadd Tjyllyungoo, Balga, 2014. Courtesy of the artist.
Image: Darrell Sibosado, Niman Aarl (Many Fish) , 2021 – 25, carved mother-of-pearl, ebony, turtle shell and trochus. Courtesy of the artist and N.Smith Gallery, Surry Hills. Photo: Andrew Curtis.
Thania Petersen’s Jawap / Dhomala A call and response across the ocean (p16) 6 Feb – 3 May John Curtin Gallery Mon – Fri 10am – 5pm Sun 12 – 4pm Official opening: Thu 5 Feb 5pm
Gracie Greene (p18) It’s Time! 14 Feb – 4 Apr Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery Tue – Sat 11am – 4pm Official opening: Fri 13 Feb 6pm
Melissa Sandy (p7) The Void 28 Feb – 28 Mar PS Art Space
Birrundudu Drawings (p19) 14 Feb – 4 Apr Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery Tue – Sat 11am – 4pm Official opening: Fri 13 Feb 6pm Image: Ralnga (Old Charlie) Janjalngana Jampijinpa Nyininy, Not titled (Creeks of Bandubada) , 1945, wax crayon on brown paper, Berndt Museum [1945/0097].
Tue – Fri 10am – 4pm Sat & Sun 10am – 5pm Official opening: Fri 27 Feb 6.30pm Image: Melissa Sandy & Allery Sandy at Mt Florance Station, Yindjibarndi Country. Photo: Chad Peacock Cover image: Melissa Sandy, The Void , 2025. Photo: Rachael Sandover. Courtesy of Yinjaa-Barni Art.
Image: Gracie Greene, The Seven Sisters of the Pleiades , 1986, acrylic paint on canvas board, Berndt Museum 1987/0008. Courtesy of the artist’s estate and Mangkaja Arts. This exhibition has been co-curated by Lynley Nargoordah, Mangjaka Arts, and Lee Kinsella, Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art, with support from The Berndt Museum and Mangkaja Arts
Image: Thania Petersen, JAWAP (still), 2025, single channel video with five channel sound. Courtesy of the artist and Ames Yavuz. Exhibition supported by The Navigators
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