Murrudha: Sovereign Walks

 Visual Art Exhibition Review | Brian Rope

Murrudha: Sovereign Walks | Dr Matilda House, Brenda L. Croft, William James Mildenhall, Prue Hazelgrove, Dean Freeman, Cheryl Davison, Shane Herrington

ANU School of Art & Design Gallery | 7 July - 7 August 2026

In her capacity as team leader for the Australian National University (ANU) Indigenous Health and Wellbeing Grand Challenge, Professor Brenda L. Croft drew inspiration from her ancestors' sovereign acts. 

Protesting genocidal conditions imposed on them over eight decades of colonial and unsettler-colonial impact, more than 200 Gurindji (and related nations and clans) stockmen and their families marched off the 2nd Wave Hill Station in outback Australia in 1966. Together with an earlier sovereign action in 1963 by Yolngu people, their 22-kilometer Walk-Off Track garnered national and international coverage and support over nearly nine years of activism. It became seen as the origins of the national land rights movement.

In 1927, senior Wiradjuri walamira (clevermen) Nangar/Yangar (c.1848-1927) also known as Jimmy Clements), and Ooloogan (c. 1840-1928) also known as George John Noble and Marvellous together completed a 3 days, 93 miles (150 kilometres) walk. It was undertaken in order to demonstrate their sovereignty by being present for the official opening of the new federal Parliament House on 9 and 10 May on Ngambri/Ngunawal homelands in the, then, recently established national capital, Canberra. Contemporary press clippings acknowledge their participation as defending their sovereign rights to their traditional Country.

They walked from the Brungle Station (also known as Brungle Community), nestled between Gundagai and Tumut on Walgalu/Wiradyuri Country, across the Brindabella Range to Canberra. It has been (and is) the driving force for the Challenge project

Murrudha: Sovereign Walks – Track #14 is the fourteenth outcome associated with the Challenge project "Murrudha: Sovereign Walks – tracking cultural actions through art, Country, language and music".

The Murrudha team and First Nations community members have undertaken two test walks determining Nangar and Ooloogan’s route, with a final test walk undertaken for the 99th anniversary in May 2026.

This exhibition showcases creative-led research in progress since 2020, including audio-visual documentation, alongside creative art and craftworks by a number of First Nations, and some non-Indigenous, artists associated with the project. The room sheet available at the exhibition provides background information regarding the various significant people integral to the project.

At the exhibition’s official opening guests heard a great presentation by Dr Aunty Matilda House OAM singing up Country and were treated to a wonderful performance by the Djinama Yalaga choir. And exhibition curator, Professor Croft, spoke passionately about the project. I mention that because all of those things added wonderfully to the visual art on display.

Dr Aunty Matilda House OAM © Brian Rope

Djinama Yalaga choir © Brian Rope

Professor Brenda L. Croft © Brian Rope

There are 35 diverse works in the exhibition including three audiovisuals to spend time with, two artworks by Dr Matilda House on loan from the Canberra Museum and Gallery Collection, and three photographs. Two of the latter show indigenous people on the steps of Parliament House – one on 10 May 1927, the other on 23 November 2023. The third is of George John Noble aka Marvellous with a dog, pre-1926. These photos are by William James Mildenhall and Prue Hazelgrove.

Aunty Matilda House was born in 1945 and is a proud Ngambri-Ngunnawal woman who has determinedly pursued social justice for Indigenous people in the wider community. She is well known and respected, indeed loved, by the general community of Canberra, all of whom have been at various events when Aunty has welcomed them to Country. It is good to have her artwork included here.

Many Canberrans know about the Mildenhall collection which comprises more than 7,700 images on glass plate negatives and has significant cultural and historical value to all Australians. Hazelgrove specialises in the wet plate collodion process. The inkjet print from her original tintype nicely complements the Mildenhall works.

Still image from: Brungle to Canberra – Final Test Walk 4-8 May 2026 (Murrudha: Sovereign Walks – Track # 14), projection. Participants: Brungle First Nations community members, Bugang Bila Indigenous Rangers (Tumut, Brungle, Snowy Mountains area), Professor Brenda L Croft, Monika Duggan, Terry Cleary, Rohit Rao (ANU). Drone operator/A-V documenter: Colin Elphick, Numeral Creative. 

Dr Matilda House (Williams), Murumbeeja dooligah, 1996, Edition 1 /6. Printer Jan Hogan and Theo Trembly Studio One Inc Canberra. Canberra Museum and Gallery Collection.

Jimmy Clements (also known as Nangar, Yangar or ‘King Billy’) on the front steps of Parliament House, c. 10 May 1927. Photograph by William James Mildenhall. Inkjet print on archival paper. National Archives of Australia.

Prue Hazelgrove, Nangar and Ooloogan Descendants on steps of Old Parliament House, 23 November 2023, as part of Murrudha: Sovereign Walks – Track #4, 24 November 2023. Inkjet print on archival paper, (from original tintype, wet plate collodion process) on archival paper.

There is a superb acrylic gouache on rag board by Cheryl Davison, some beautiful wood coolamons by Dean Freeman, and an impressive bark canoe and wooden spears by Shane Herrington. And, last but not least, numerous high quality inkjet prints (from original tintypes) by Brenda L. Croft. Davison’s artwork is inspired by the river that flows from the mountains to the sea (a phrase Canberrans know well) through the Country of her grandfather. Making cultural objects allows Freeman to connect with what his Ancestors used in their daily lives. Herrington’s approach also fosters a deep connection to cultural heritage. Croft’s artworks here are some of her First Nations portraits created since 2019.

Cheryl Davison, Still on Country, 2026, acrylic gouache on rag board, 70 x 57 cm.

 

Dean Freeman, gulaman (coolamons) (installation), 2023-26, wood, dimensions variable

Installation image © Brian Rope

Shane Herrington, Murlin (bark canoe) 2026. Bark, bush string, dimensions variable

And Spears, 2026. Wood, bush string, dimensions variable

Installation image © Brian Rope

Brenda L. Croft, Julie (Dhulanyagan clan, Yorta Yorta/Wiradjuri/Wurundjeri Peoples), 2024 from the series Naabámi (thou shall/will see): Barangaroo (army of me). 42 x 27.9cm, inkjet print (from original tintype, wet plate collodion process) on archival paper.

Brenda L. Croft, Men of High Degree: Jim Everett – puralia meenamatta (clan plangermairreenner, Ben Lomond people, Cape Portland nation, north-east Tasmania), 2023. 42 x 27.9cm, inkjet print (from original tintype, wet plate collodion process) on archival paper.

 

There it is - art, Country, language and music. All feature in this excellent and important exhibition - and in planned associated events. Please see it in person if you are able to.

This review is also available on the author's blog.

Aftercare, I am that I am, Transcending bodies

Photography Review | Brian Rope

Prue Hazelgrove | I am that I am – a deconstruction 

Emily Portmann | Aftercare

Xi Li, Meng-Yu Yan and Joseph Blair | Transcending bodies

Photo Access | 11 August to 10 September 2022

Across the three gallery spaces, these exhibitions come together to de-construct traditional ideas of identity and interrogate ideologies of self that exist within society. Each exhibition employs distinct methods in exploring societal definitions of self, suffering, and gender nonconformity.

Bringing tintype and collage processes into conversation, Prue Hazelgrove’s I am that I am – a deconstruction examines histories of queer visibility and erasure. The artist says she “is attempting to transform harm into healing through representation and reclamation.” 

Hazelgrove achieves her goals most successfully with her excellent well-constructed paper, photo and text collages. Close reading of each piece of text clipped from a Christian self-help book clearly reveals the story of each particular artwork. The act of having cut up the texts for use in the collages can be seen as having removed any sense of authority they may have had in the source book. Their use also brings vividly to mind the dreadful selective use of scriptural texts by those who have sought, and still do seek, to make people conform to their views of what is right or wrong.

 

Prue Hazelgrove, Too much Skin- I am that I am, 2022, paper, photo and text collage

Prue Hazelgrove, According to Gods design- I am that I am, 2022, paper, photo and text collage

A number of high-quality tintypes complement the collages, revealing with raw honesty the people portrayed. Using the tintype medium fits with its long-standing use for documentation and adds to the artist’s intention of reclaiming her right to “exist as I am”.

 

Prue Hazelgrove, Just a couple of good buds – I am that I am, 2022, Tintype

The catalogue for Hazelgrove’s exhibition also features a piece of fine writing by Emma Batchelor, a queer writer, award-winning author and dancer from Canberra. This piece, Ultra Visible, should be read intently.

In Aftercare, the artist, Emily Portmann, presents a video of her performance as she encases her head in a large pink roll of bubble wrap. Using a sheet of the same pink bubble wrap as the backdrop in the gallery for the video screen is a nice touch. The video is accompanied by a series of self-portraits taken during the performance, each exploring the emotional and psychological ideology behind self-care and wellbeing. In each of them her head has become a large pink cylinder. Hands explore this mysterious object, searching for something unknown to us. The catalogue suggests we are viewing an emerging parody of “a society in which fetishised notions of self-comfort, protection and healing coincide with the commercialisation of wellbeing.”

 

Emily Portmann, Aftercare, Action 7, 2021 , archival pigment print

Then there is a group exhibition by Xi Li, Meng-Yu Yan and Joseph Blair.  Transcending Bodies employs video, 3D animation, AI and printed photo-media to challenge normative ideas of identity and envision new forms of living in the virtual realm.

This exhibition explores how sense-of-self and social dynamics are shaped in virtual environments and brings into focus the possibilities and limits of existing online, untethered from our physical bodies. The catalogue speaks of the existence of hybrids of machine and organism being reality, drawing attention to the fact that many of us now have technological items implanted in our bodies functioning to keep us in better health – or even alive.

There also is a catalogue reference to the way so many of us use social media video games, phone Apps and other technological things on a daily basis, thus moving our physical selves into the virtual realm.

In his series Postcards from Hyrule, Meng-Yu Yan has taken the role of photographer within a virtual space. We see screenshots of this virtual world in a Game played during COVID-19 lockdown. They present as illusory or ghost-like landscapes, with an apparition here and a luminous nebula there. They are printed on a metallic gloss paper as postcards, suggesting they are souvenirs acquired from another planet. Each artwork is a worthy inclusion in the show.

 

Meng-Yu Yan, Postcards from Hyrule 5, 2021, inkjet print on Ilford Metallic gloss

Joseph Blair contributes two diptych works from a series The Tongue of Missing Lovers. Each comprises a photographic portrait accompanied by words about the subject and expressing a feeling about that person. They have an emotional impact if we allow it.

 

Joseph Blair, A Much Larger Tip (From series The Tongue of Missing Lovers), 2022,
inkjet prints, diptych

The third artist in the group is the interdisciplinary Xi Li. Here we see 8.5 minutes of  video, Brain Island: Hyperreal City. It is important to take a seat because the strong probability is that you will want to view it more than once. This is as fine a video artwork as I have seen. It draws you in, uncertain as to what you might come next. So much is happening all through this work that during each viewing you will observe something new.

Xi Li, Brain Island Hyperreal City, 2019, video still

 

Li has woven so many aspects of her own identity into this remarkable piece. She has inserted herself into the work utilising green screen compositing – a process of layering two images or video streams into one another. We see her various alter-egos and contradictory cultures, reflecting her lived experience under both Chinese and Western political systems.

These three exhibitions and their catalogues are each well worth visiting and spending time with.

This review was first published on page 18 of The Canberra Times of 5.9.22 and online here. It is also on the author's blog here.