These drawings were made at the Spirit in the Land exhibition, which is currently on at the ANU Drill Hall Gallery until 1 April (opening hours, Wednesday to Sunday 12.00 to 5.00pm).

I really enjoyed this exhibition, which gives a succinct summary of some of Australia’s best landscape artists, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous. I loved seeing Rosalie Gascoigne and Rover Thomas rubbing artistic shoulders. In the side room at the back right of the gallery is a great display of the work of Lorraine Connelly-Northey (Waradgerie and Irish background), whose re-interpretation of traditional Indigenous forms is continually innovative and exciting.

Along one wall hang a series of Narrbongs, (string bags or the Waradgerie word for the pouch of a marsupial) and in the middle of the room are ‘bark’ canoes.

Not only are the works themselves exciting to look at, but the shadows they cast are almost equally interesting.

This Narrbong is made of wire and a piece of pressed tin

and this one of rusted fencing wire.

I’m planning to go back and do more drawings soon.