Timo Hogan Lake Baker 2020. Acrylic on linen, 197 x 288 cm. State Art Collection, Art Gallery of Western Australia. Purchased through the Art Gallery of Western Australia Foundation: COVID-19 Arts Stimulus Package, 2020. © Timo Hogan/Copyright Agency Ltd.
Collective Ground
Special Display
Gallery 07
Until 14 November 2021
A special exhibition drawing together 60 works from First Nations artists across Western Australia.
The pandemic has forced us to consider the way we live and how. Many of us have had to adjust from being in wide-open spaces to being contained in small spaces. It has been a time to reflect on the places we occupy, and the spaces we inhabit, internally and externally. Collective Ground asks the viewer to consider the ground on which they walk.
Yamaji/Noongar curator Tui Raven has brought together Collective Ground — the first exhibition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander works acquired through AGWA’s COVID-19 stimulus package. It explores deep time and the stories that flow through the land on which we all live — as told through the artworks of First Nations peoples across the state.
The works in Collective Ground have been curated in consideration of the need to separate some of the works based on subject matter related to men’s and women’s Tjukurba/Tjukurpa (the creation period when ancestor beings created the world). During the Tjukurba ancestral beings left marks on the landscape and this laid out Songlines or Creation Lines. The word Tjukurba was chosen as it is from languages of the Western and Central Desert regions of Australia. Many works in Collective Ground relate to the Tjukurba of these regions. The word for creation time in Noongar language is Nyitting.
“Collective Ground tells a story that transcends the power of individual artworks.” — Neha Kale
