Dwelling with Place: Education Space + Collection Works

10 September – 10 December 2022

Dwelling with Place is the first of a series of iterative exhibitions by the Berndt Museum at UWA that explores our custodianship of significant Indigenous collections on Noongar Boodjar, and considers our connections to communities and places on campus, locally, and across Australia. These exhibitions are also being led by our role as a teaching museum, developing Indigenous-led pedagogies with the UWA School of Indigenous Studies, and linking our exhibitions to new curricula.

This edition sees us focus on important Noongar artists who deftly navigate forms of cultural continuity and truth-telling through their artworks – relating and connecting with country, as well as exploring the disruptions and displacements wrought by colonisation. Dwelling with Place considers Indigenous perspectives on dwelling as a continual process of involvement with the world around us, from becoming intimately aware of its cycles and subtle transformations, to the continuation of deep ancestral connections to place, to considering the complex layers of history embedded within the environment. The exhibition features key paintings by Sharyn Egan, Shane Pickett, and Primus Ugle, a film series on local artists, and catalogues from the Berndt Museum archive, linking together stories of place, making, and exhibition practice.

Education kit

Dwelling with Place: Education Space + Collection Works education kit [PDF 1,182KB]

Image: Installation view of Dwelling with Place (2022) featuring (left to right) the Cultural Map, 2019, depicting important Noongar sites and stories around the UWA campus and surrounds; a table of Berndt Museum catalogues from 1989-present; and a still from the Berndt Museum artist video series, 2022, showing print-maker Brett Nannup at work in the studio.