The Nature of Culture

The Nature of Culture presents recent acquisitions from the Gallery’s collection of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art. This selection of paintings, sculpture and woven works showcases the diversity of materiality and making across regions throughout Australia. It also reflects the creative dynamism that springs from cultural connections to Country.

Each work reveals the artist’s enduring associations to place, their extensive knowledge of important sites and these sites’ ancestral and spirit beings, and their ongoing responsibilities to Country, whether it be land, water or sky. However, these works are more than representations of Country – they are evidence of ownership. Each is an expression of continuing existence, cultural resilience and belonging to place after invasion.

The Nature of Culture complements Bewilderness: Recent acquisitions, an exhibition in the adjoining galleries, which draws on recent acquisitions across all collecting areas to examine our physical and psychological experiences of place.