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Noongar Country 2024 | Our Elders, Our Pathfinders

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About

Our Elders, Our Pathfinders brings together Elders, who are Aboriginal artists, living and practicing on Noongar Boodja, to showcase their stories, cultural knowledge, and artistic skill for the 2024 Noongar Country exhibition at Bunbury Regional Art Gallery.

Curated by an impressive team of Aboriginal artists and art workers, Zali Morgan, Katelyn Whitehurst and Amanda Bell, this exhibition is curated with the vision to elevate and highlight Elders who have paved the way forward for moort and boodja, past and present.

Our Elders will guide future generations of artists, and future years of Noongar Country; Our Elders. Our most Loved and Respected ones, Our Pathfinders.

The Noongar Country 2024 exhibition, Our Elders, Our Pathfinders, opened on 7 September with the Exhibition Opening and Awards event. Congratulations to the award winners and to all the Elders exhibiting works in this year's Noongar Country exhibition:

Noongar Maaman Overall WinnerPhilip Hansen for Home Country
Noongar Maaman Runner upArthur Eades for Running Away from the Misson
Noongar Oolaman Overall WinnerAlice Collard for Woody Moort
Noongar Oolaman Runner upRobyn Jean for Nuture

Meet the Curators

Katelyn Whitehurst

My name is Katelyn Whitehurst, I am a Wardandi, Menang Noongar woman through my Father’s Mother and will be a part of this year’s Noongar Country Curatorium. I have a large passion for supporting the Southwest Noongar community and an even larger passion for the arts. My own practice sees all mediums and forms, inspired by my culture and Country, I am a storyteller. My artwork explores expression and feeling, using bold colours, abstracted forms or installations of household objects – my ideas are what influences the shape of my work. My one hope is to take the viewer on an adventure, leaving them with an emotion or story they didn’t yet have when they entered. Together with the moorditj yorgas Amanda Bell and Zali Morgan I believe we can do just that.

Amanda Bell

Amanda Bell is a Yamatji woman, born on Whadjuk Country and has lived most of her life on Wardandi Country. She is a maker of things.

After some years soullessly toiling in the public service; making is freedom! Inspired by stories of warmth, pain, sorrow and humour, I am emerging onto this path as a maker of things and spaces. Finding the charm in the humdrum, seeking the heroic in the domestic, gives me the ability to find beauty amongst the pain. I am attempting to explore these ideas in my objects and in making places. Our stories made real. I seek to engage with others by telling stories in a way that is ‘right way’ for me as an Aboriginal person and artist, and to make a contribution to making spaces culturally safe in the arts and beyond. I come from experiences grappling with ‘otherness,’ often in the attempt to say something about the use of language and its role in the creation and maintenance of power structures. I also honour the rage.

Zali Morgan

Zali Morgan is a Whadjuk, Ballardong and Wilman Noongar woman, born and raised near Wooditchup on Wardandi Boodjar, now currently based near Boorloo. Zali has a deep passion for working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art and artists, particularly Noongar art and artists. She has worked closely with private and institutional collections, with a keen interest in decolonising practices. Zali’s practice spans Curating, Creative Writing, printmaking and sculpture. In her printmaking, Zali looks at iconic buildings and spaces within Boorloo and the Noongar region and attempts to expose the history and significance of the sites for Noongar people.

 

Photographer: Richard Van Wyk

Image: Noongar Country 2023 winner: Emily Rose, Listen (2023), oil paint on canvas

Thank you to our exhibition and awards sponsors: