For our first Project Space of 2024, we’re excited to present newly commissioned and recent works by Thea Anamara Perkins, an Arrernte and Kalkadoon artist whose practice incorporates portraiture and landscape to  question representations of First Nations peoples and Country.

The striking combination of glowing landscape paintings of Country alongside protest-style posters that reprise the bold and iconic visual language of the 1980s, address heavy questions about what it means to be First Nations in contemporary Australia with a commitment to “strong and  ready communication”.

Perkins’ Project Space installation has been curated in conversation with the themes of the main gallery exhibition, Disco Dreamtime Drums by Walmajarri artist John Prince Siddon, which invokes the sombre reality and ongoing impacts of catastrophic flooding in his hometown of Fitzroy Crossing, WA, in 2023. Perkins’ series of screenprinted posters were made in collaboration with Town Camp artists in Mparntwe (Alice Springs) – the artist’s ancestral home – reflecting the community’s concerns relating to impending climate change, as well as fracking and mismanagement of precious water resources. These shared urgent concerns expose hard truths and an unwavering dedication to see greater collective care for Country and First Nations peoples.

Featuring a new Cement Fondu commissioned painting in conversation with the artist’s 2022 Wynne Prize finalist painting, Home, landscape paintings in the installation reflect Perkins’ ongoing excavation of her  family’s photographic archive, which provides consistent source material for her gestural and saturated depictions of Country. Represented in compositions that deliberately hone in on the essence of place, the works evoke feelings of comfort, glimmering with the familiar landscapes of Mparntwe across time.

Raised and based in Sydney, Perkins has family ties to the Redfern  community and has worked in a broad range of community projects. She was the recipient of the 2023 La Prairie Art Award, administered by The Art Gallery of NSW, and won the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship in 2021, and the Alice Prize & Dreaming Award in 2020.