Glenn Loughrey

The story of Australia is a story told from the edges. It is a story that often leaves out important bits such as Tasmania, the deep north or the red centre and ignores the darker stroies at the heart of the countries history. It is a story ignoring the story of the people who have lived here for some 50,000 years. There is much more to Australia than a story told from the perimeter.

Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr writes of Dadirri or deep listening, an indigenous way of living in harmony with country past and present. This painting takes us on a journey out from and back to the centre, the place where deep listening begins, ends and remains.

Indigenous people are indistinguishable from their country. This picture portrays the authors country around Ulan on the Goulburn river in NSW Australia. The painting was painted from memory, as almost all of the country described has been destroyed by three open cut coal mines, and does not exist as it did in my childhood.

This piece explores a black and white cosmology, one which sees humans as the centre of the world and God as being only interested in them. It allows no room for those who are not white, human or productive and sees the Christian metanarrative only in these terms. It is one of three pieces in a series exploring the changing cosmology influencing the fading of a traditional understanding of the white Christian narrative.

Growing up in the bush, the goanna was the most primal beast a young boy would encounter. The goanna is also the totem of the local Wiradjuri people and therefore was deeply connected to the people who shared the country with them. This is a female goanna with the capacity to bring new life to both the tribe and countryside.

This is a study for the larger An Australian Landscape - Canvas As Country. It reflects my personal story and includes ideas and symbols of personal importance alongside those of traditional life.

This is the second pice in the series. It introduces nature or creation as an equal in the ongoing story of creation through evolution towards wholeness. It understands that creation is unfinished in an ever expanding universe and that humanity's future is connected directly to the way we live in mutual respect with it.

Alice Springs and the Todd River live in an uneasy relatonship. Those who live on the sand of the Todd River are not easily welcomed in the city. The constant police patrols, the avoidance and exclusion and the deliberate efforts to isolate these people can be witnessed daily in Todd Mall.

It seemed to me on a recent visit there that the high rise buildings facing the river were on security duty protecting the life going on behind them. This is not the whole story.

Many of the Todd River people were to be found in the local low level library watching videos on aboriginal culture! This was a welcoming space with a completely different feel to the rest of the town.

We are in the process of a discussion about how to recognise indigenous Australians in the constitution. This piece suggests that only when deep dialogue occurs between equals resulting in true sovereignty and a treaty that recognises such will we have recognition.

The piece uses red to signify the bloody history of our country, the black lines as the fences and policies we have used to further that history, the black and white squares as the way we view our selves in opposition.

The tentative yellow lines and the meeting place reminds us that we have only just begun and that this process is fragile and can collapse at anytime.

This painting aims to capture the explosion begun in the far distant past and expanding into the far distant future. It explores land, water, nature slowly becoming, and becoming, and becoming.

There is no evidence of humans in this painting because we were late to arrive and will soon pass and the world will going becoming without us.

A simple study of the colours and shapes inherent in the imagination of country.

William Ricketts (1898–1993) was an Australian potter and sculptor who believed that all of life is one.

This painting of a simple dandelion (white) containing the essence of all creation (yellow dot) reflects, "the power of his vision of a modern Australia that embraces Aboriginal spirituality and respect for the natural world was his general message throughout his artworks."

A little introspective piece by God, after she knocked off work at the end of the first week of creation happy with the humble beginnings she had made on a project, which promised to be of an infinite nature.

I have used a discarded commercial canvas rescued fro an Op Shop, which had those words stencilled on it.

Somewhere Beyond Alice explores the interaction between the ancient and modern.

The elders of the McDonnell Ranges tower above the impermanence of modern life; a bitumen road and a burnt out car.