LOCAL artists Nikita Moore, Liz Maddy and Verity Oswin will this weekend showcase their work in Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery.
The two new exhibitions – Yemurraki Art by Moore, and Yarrein Mud Lyric by Maddy and Oswin – are heavily inspired by the landscape and environment of the Mallee.
The exhibitions include paintings, pottery and poetry showing how each artist connects with the land.
Wemba Wemba woman Moore explores her personal journey of change and healing through her paintings of the Mallee landscape and her book Wurreker, meaning “Message Carrier” in English.
“My art is more intuitive,” she said.
“A lot of it comes out when I’m going through something.
“I want people to understand that we’re all the same and that we all also go through changes, and that its nice to have a place you can call home.”
Moore said she used art as therapy to get her through tough times.
“It was during COVID when I had left my job (I realised) the art was always there, but everything else was just so different,” she said.
“But I just thought, well I’m not going to get down about this.”
That’s when she fell in love with art again.
“Art’s always been there for me, so I just started focusing on that,” she said.
Excerpts from her book accompany her art at the exhibition.
“I didn’t think I’d be writing a book, it just started off a descriptions of my art,” she said.
Through her first solo exhibition, Moore hopes for visitors to experience her “yemurraki”, which means dreaming in Wemba Wemba language.
“It’s a bit unreal, I didn’t think I’d be here doing this,” she said
“It took time to figure out four years of uncertainty, but I just kept at it and it’s brought me here I guess.”
Alongside Moore’s exhibition will be another exhibition called Yarrein Mud Lyric by potter Maddy and poet Oswin, who grew up as neighbours on a far-flung corner of the Riverina, in the town of Mallan, NSW.
The two decided to collaborate after COVID-19 lockdowns when Oswin moved back to Mallan and felt inspired by the raw nature of Maddy’s handmade pots to write poems.
“I’ve always really admired Liz’s pots since I was a child,” Oswin said.
Maddy’s ceramic creations are pit-fired in her farm on the Yarrein Creek, which she said she loves due to the unpredictable nature of the creation process, or what she calls “pot luck”.
Oswin recalled of Maddy’s early attempts: “They were very experimental and most of the pots exploded.”
Unlike many artists, Maddy refuses to have a vision to create her art, and leaves it up to mother nature to control the end result, which reflects the pallet of the landscape.
The exhibition was also a deep reflection of the land Maddy and Oswin inhabit, and explored their nuanced relationship with the land as settlers.
“It’s setting up a dialogue to talk about our relationship with the land, even though it’s a very complex one,” Oswin said.
“It won’t be solved by not talking about it and articulating how we feel. Even articulating how beautiful we find the land as well.”
Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery director Ian Tully hoped the exhibition would provide visitors with insight into how these artists see the world.
“What ties these two exhibitions together is their love of country,” Mr Tully said.
“I think what we always hope is that visitors will take away a different view of the world that is affecting or influencing the artists.
“It’s about helping to understand the world around us.”
The exhibitions will open on Saturday, February 17 at 2pm and will be showing until April 14.
