Thinking Together: Exchanges with the natural world will present major commissions by contemporary artists Robert Andrew, Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan and Keg de Souza, presented alongside intricate paintings by the Martu communities of central Western Australia, and video works by Sorawit Sangsataya and Tina Stefanou.
The exhibition explores themes of reciprocity and collaboration between the human and non-human. Each work responds to notions of community, and considers the possibility that new knowledge can only be created through a process of thinking together, via communal making, cooperation between the species and embodying First Nations practices of knowledge sharing. A central pillar of this approach is presented in the large scale collaborative paintings of the Martu communities of central Western Australia, reflecting long histories of creating together that strengthens culture and grounds knowledge in place. These works reflect a complex web of relationships, linking environmental and ritual knowledge, geographic information and ancestral stories, whilst also building strong connections between the artists who come together to paint.