Immerse & Nourish - Araluen Collection

Take a break from the baking heat of Central Australia and be replenished with these energising artworks drawn from the Araluen Collection. This exhibition brings together works by Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists with a focus on water – surface or subterranean – as a life-giving force for people and Country. In these artworks we see the Country of Central Australia with its soakwater systems and distant rockholes waiting for rain, and beyond to the oceans and beaches of this vast continent. This exhibition offers a sanctuary to contemplate and be nourished.

Central to this exhibition is Fiona Foley’s arresting 2024 Alice Prize winning video work Janjari 2022 which takes the viewer on a journey that flips “the ethnographic lens of colonial myth making” through her Country of K’gari (Fraser Island). It’s provocative, immersive and visually stunning. Elton Wirri’s recently acquired watercolour painting Petermann Ranges immediately places the viewer in Central Australia.This majestically lyrical painting illuminates the vitality of his mother’s and grandmother’s Country. While John Olsen’s impressive Lake Eyre - the Edge 1985 – 2021, donated by the artist in 2022, captures the moment the rains from the distant north reach this immense catchment in remote South Australia, bringing sustenance and life.

Grace Kemarre Robinya invites us to witness the glorious rain upon her Country at Mount Wedge and Ginger and Iyawi Wikilyiri take us deep within their Country in Husband and wife story 2012 to reveal intricate knowledge of ancient water systems. In contrast, Mac Betts’ Cable Beach 1977, gifted to the Araluen Arts Centre for its opening in 1984, transports us to walking bare foot on the soft golden sand of this iconic Broome beach. You can almost hear the waves splashing on the sand. While local artist Alison Hittman captures the lushness of Central Australia’s soft sand dunes and desert oak trees in seen from a troopy 2003. Deborah Clarke, another local artist, creates an illusion of the Ilparpa claypans after rain where the viewer has no sense of horizon or scale of the scene depicted. Soak up the replenishment and nourishment of this exhibition as we move through summer.