Trackers: John Edwards

"Narratives sourced in Australian bushranger images are integral to a colonized sense of place... What has for me become increasingly fascinating are the stories around this that are less well known such as those of the Indigenous trackers that inhabited these narratives."

This exhibition will be open to the public from October 3, 2020, Saturday-Sunday, 11am-5pm. All work will be available to purchase from our online stockroom.

John Edwards exhibition explores colonial histories, myths and legends which underpin much of the Australian psyche. Edwards conjures up the past, with his bold portraits of Indigenous trackers, whose knowledge of country, were pivotal to the survival of the European settlers.

The stories of the travails of Captain Thunderbolt and Mary Ann Bugg as told within Edwards work, are vividly imaginative and reveal a collective mythology central to the Australian underdog. "The trackers possessed an integral knowledge of the landscape so the establishment - the police force and the law “ wanted to utilize this, to hire them to bring escaped criminals to justice." John Edwards, 2020