Donnas on the Run: Exhuming the Australian Badlands is the upshot of a recently formed collaboration between emerging artists Lucy Forsberg and Sally Molloy whose individual practices and interests orbit around issues of Australian identity, the Australian landscape, and the examination of colonial histories. This new collaborative body of work explores the artists’ shared interests in forgotten, marginalised or outsider figures in Australian history.
Working with video, sound and digital print Forsberg and Molloy interrogate lesser-known historical characters such as the larrikin girl, the bush boundary-rider, female convicts and transgender felons. Borrowing from Australian historical archives and accounts of outsider behaviour, and drawing from their own futile attempts to connect with land, the artists propose new visual narratives of Australian cultural resistance that reverberate in their contemporary contexts. The exhibition opens up a dialogue rooted in unresolved tensions and asks: what place do these narratives have in a personal or local imaginary that is finally firmly and rightly rooted in an awareness of colonial violence against Australian First Nations Peoples and ongoing ‘whitewashing’ of land and history?
The gallery is free to visit. Visiting hours are 10am to 4pm Monday to Friday and 2pm to 4pm Saturday.
