Exhibiting Artists: First Nations artists based in Naarm (Melbourne): Maree Clarke, Lisa Couzens, Vicki Couzens, Kirsten Garner Lyttle, Brian Martin, Yhonnie Scarce, Frances Tapueluelu, and Wani Toaishara
Curator: dr. Kimba Thompson & Catherine Hunt
Exhibition dates: Saturday 5 April 2025 to Sunday 11 May 2025
Venue: Blak Dot Gallery, 33 Saxon Street, Brunswick VIC 3056
Blak Dot Gallery proudly presents EXCHANGE – ngunggilanha • yunggama • taonga tauhokohoko, a dynamic group exhibition featuring eight extraordinary First Nations artists based in Naarm (Melbourne). Through photography, drawing, installation, glass, multimedia, sculpture, and weaving, EXCHANGE explores the foundational relationships between people, place, and material. In each work, the artists engage deeply with their surroundings, challenging and shaping their artistic practices through these interactions.
In this exhibition, artistic exchange transcends transactional dynamics; it is about forging connections that inform and transform practice – through conversations with Country, culture, language, and community. Works like Dr. Kirsten Garner Lyttle’s woven photography and, sisters Vicki and Lisa Couzens’, woven dilly bags reconnect ancestral knowledge to material, activating the land and the body. Similarly, Maree Clarke and Brian Martin draw on the ongoing exchange between past traditions and contemporary practice, blending cultural material with new mark-making techniques. Yhonnie Scarce and Frances Tapueluelu examine historical disruptions through their glass installations and symbolic crowns, engaging with the material and the narratives it holds. While Wani Toaishara’s film explores the effects of displacement, emphasizing memory and story as acts of resistance and survival.
Curated by Wiradjuri filmmaker, curator dr. Kimba Thompson and assisted by independent curator and designer Catherine Hunt, EXCHANGE foregrounds the strength of artistic practice grounded in relationships – with people, place, and material – before knowledge and ideas emerge from this dialogue. “Each of these artists has nurtured their creative discipline through cultural practices that have endured – not in isolation, but through exchanges that shape and reshape across generations,” says Catherine Hunt.
By embracing the power of meaningful exchange, these artists transform their practice, asserting agency over their artistic legacies. Kimba Thompson adds, “Despite policy and industry shifts that often seek to divide us, our strength lies in sustaining relationships that honor our connections to culture, Country, and to each other. Through these exchanges, we reclaim, evolve, and continue our traditions and practices on our own terms.”
This exhibition opening also celebrates the re-opening of Blak Dot Gallery within Balam Balam Place, a site that has undergone a significant $30 million redevelopment to create a brand new, state-of-the-art cultural, creative, and accessible hub for artists, creatives, and the Merri-bek community. Balam Balam – meaning ‘butterfly’in Woi-wurrung – symbolizes beauty, transformation, creativity, and the strength of community. It embodies the spirit of unity and the freedom to imagine and create together.
Opening on Saturday 5 April from 2-5pm with a Welcome to Country ceremony and line up of cultural performances and entertainment, Blak Dot Gallery invites audiences to experience EXCHANGE – an exhibition that celebrates the vitality of artistic practice born from the deep, reciprocal relationships between people, place, material, and ideas.
EXCHANGE is proud to be participating in YIRRAMBOI FESTIVAL 2025.
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