'Water bodies' exhibition

Attesting II by Nici Cumpston

Featuring a new series from the artist's extensive body of work, across Kingston's Outdoor Lightbox Gallery. Presenting portraits of trees and significant sites within the backwaters and inland lake systems of the Barka (Murray) River. The 9 lightboxes can be found around the outside of Kingston Arts Centre, visible all day, everyday. 

“I am connected to the Murray and the Darling River systems through my Barkandji family and since 2000 have been creating portraits of the trees and significant sites within these backwaters and inland lake systems. Deep long middens reveal popular campsites where many people have gathered, holding ceremony, exchanging goods, hunting, fishing, cooking and eating. Barkandji people would travel from the Barka along the length of the Murray River for these important gatherings. As I walk this Country I get the strong sense that the ancestors have only just gone, but they’ve left their subtle calling cards to let us know how vital these places are.”
- Nici Cumpston

water body by Judy Watson

Projected onto Kingston's Skybridge from sunset to sunrise, exploring Aboriginal and scientific histories connected to the waters of Meanjin (Brisbane). Located on the south side of Kingston City Hall, connected to 999 Nepean Highway, the video is visible from the street. 

WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that this video contains images of deceased persons.

"The 3 channel video work follows in the footsteps and research practice of some early Queensland scientists including Joseph, Thomas and Josephine Bancroft (Mackerras) and intertwines this with imagery of Aboriginal people and cultural material from the Brisbane region. Sites include Duke of York’s Hollow, Victoria Park, Enoggera Creek, Bancroft Park, Bowen Park, Qld Herbarium, Qld Museum, the Bancroft Centre and Deception Bay, Brisbane. The image of water is constant, connecting Aboriginal and scientific histories of place. In the 1880s and 1890s, Joseph and Thomas Bancroft excavated the natural rock formations in an intertidal zone at Deception Bay, creating two tidal baths. These were used for therapeutic and recreational purposes. Water has a memory that carries murmurs from the past, scarified by lines of paddles and the passage of Aboriginal canoes, small boats, and large ships. The journeys of these travellers leave their mark in liquid time, the moon pulled tides covering and uncovering a littoral edge."
- Judy Watson

Directors: Judy Watson, Alex Barnes / Editor: Alex Barnes / Sound: Michael Hewes / Photographer: Carl Warner / Cinematographer: Jared Bazley

HD: 4:04 minutes, colour, stereo, 16:9, continuous loop, projection or screen. 

Join Lisa Waup for a very special free workshop in August, related to her artworks in the exhibition at Kingston Arts Centre, Moorabbin.

Bookings are required to guarantee your place.

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Nici Cumpston is a proud Barkandji artist, curator, writer and educator, whose family are of Afghan, Irish and English descent. Barkandji are the people who belong to the Barka, which is the name in their language for the Darling River, which is situated in western New South Wales, Australia. 

Having studied fine arts, specialising in photography at the University of South Australia, Cumpston has an ongoing practice where she creates large scale hand-coloured photographic portraits of the ancient trees and waterways along the Barka. This work gives reverence to her Barkandji Country and honors her personal responsibility to care for and nurture the precious waterways and all that live and breathe along it.

In 2008 Cumpston commenced as the inaugural Curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art at the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) and since 2014 has also been the Artistic Director of the internationally renowned Tarnanthi Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art. Tarnanthi includes a statewide festival featuring artists from across the country in dozens of exhibitions and events, a major exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia as well as the Tarnanthi Art Fair where artists are fully supported to sell works of art directly to the public.

Cumpston has worked with hundreds of artists and curated sixteen major exhibitions since 2008, each with an accompanying exhibition catalogue. As well as this she has curated collection displays throughout the Gallery and has been a regular contributor to the AGSA quarterly Magazine. She has written numerous catalogue essays for artist’s exhibitions in other state institutions and commercial galleries, and national arts publications.

In acknowledgment of her deep expertise Nici has been a specialist advisor on numerous state-based and national arts committees and Boards since 2004 and has represented the state government and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts on a number of international exchanges to China, Europe, Canada and the United States. 

In 2020 she received the Order of Australia medal for outstanding achievement to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts. In 2019, the South Australian Government’s Stephen Gadlabarti Goldsmith Memorial award and the South Australian Premier’s NAIDOC award in 2013. As an artist she has been exhibiting her works of art since 1998 and in that time has been invited to participate in many prestigious awards, group and solo exhibitions. She exhibits regularly, has attended artist-in-residence programs in Australia and the US and her work is held in major institutions and private collections nationally and internationally. 

Cumpston’s approach when working with artists is to listen deeply, to hear what each artist needs in order to support them to share their stories through their own vision and ideas. Her life is dedicated to the arts, and she strongly believes that art empowers people’s lives in profound and meaningful ways. 

In 2025 Cumpston took up the role as Director of Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia, it is the only museum outside of Australia dedicated to the exhibition and study of Indigenous Australian art.

Mandy Quadrio is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans sculpture, installation, video and photography. Coming from an Indigenous heritage that spans thousands of generations, her work responds to genocidal practices and dispersals enacted on her people in Tasmania/Lutruwita, since invasion and colonisation.

While she actively celebrates her long-time existence, her work seeks to uncover personal and cultural histories, narratives and perspectives that journey to the heart of great inaccuracies in Australia’s westernised history telling. 

Mandy was awarded her Doctorate in Visual Art in 2021 from Griffith University, Brisbane. Her work has been exhibited widely around Australia as well as in Italy and Sweden. She is currently a lecturer in the Contemporary Australian Indigenous Art program at Queensland College of Art and Design, Griffith University, Brisbane.

Learn more about Mandy Quadrio.

Nannette Shaw is a Trawoolway from Cape Portland, Little Mussel Roe Bay, North East Tasmania, Tyereelore from the Bass Strait Island, Tasmania and she also has ancestral connections to the Bunurong people from Welcome River, Port Philip Bay, Victoria.

Nannette is a traditional Kelp worker, Basket weaver and Shell stringer following the traditions of her ancestors, Nannette creates the traditional Bull Kelp vessels in the same way as the Ancestral women of Tasmania have done for thousands of years.

Nannette has perfected her cultural gifts for 25 years and she has taught herself to make the Water Carriers in the same way as her Ancestral Women whose work was showcased at The Crystal Place in Exhibition in 1851 for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. This Water Carrier now resides in the British Museum in London, England

Culture is important to Nannette and she knows the importance of passing on Cultural knowledge to the younger women as it’s important that our Cultural crafts as an important part not only of our past but our present and more importantly our future.

Nannette has featured in Kanalaritja: an Unbroken String, Tayenebe through the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery ant the National Museum in Canberra both of which toured Australia for two years. Nannette has also gifted Kelp work to Queen Victoria Museum, Tasmania, Launceston Riawunna Cultural Learning Centre, University of Tasmania, Governor Kate Warner, Flinders Island Aboriginal Association Incorporated, Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre and Melaythenner Teeackana Warrana Aboriginal Corporation.   

Nannette’s Kelp Water Carrier was a finalist in the 2018 NATSIAA/Telstra Award and a Kelp Water Carrier won the Koorie Heritage Trust, Viva 3D Art Award in 2018.

Nannette has had work in exhibitions such as TarraWarra, Willam Biik exhibition that toured Victoria for two years from 2022-2024, thanks to NETS Victoria, her work was also a part of In Cahoots that started in Freemantle, WA and toured Australia for two years.

On April 27^th 2026 Governor Barbara Baker placed a Bull Kelp Water Carrier made by Nannette Shaw on permanent display at Government House, Hobart, Tasmania.

Aunty Dyan Summers is a proud Bass Strait Islander, Trawlwoolway, and Bunurong Elder. She is respected for her deep cultural knowledge and commitment to Community. A skilled Traditional Weaver, she shares her stories and heritage through her craft, fostering cultural connection and resilience. 

Dedicated to equity, transparency and identity, Aunty Dyan plays a role in the strength and support of her community. In recognition of her commitment to sharing culture and education with her Bunurong Community, she was honoured to receive the 2021 Aboriginal Elder of the Year award, presented by Nairm Marr Djumbana as part of the NAIDOC awards. 

Born in Mundubbera, Queensland in 1959, Judy Watson is a descendant of the Waanyi people of north-west Queensland. Her ancestry and personal experiences have been central to her artistic practice, which spans a variety of media, including painting, printmaking, video, sculpture and installation.

As an Indigenous woman, Watson focuses on resistance, resilience and survival in response to colonisation. Evoking place and associated memories, the imagery Watson garners may include the historical or scientific document. Her work exposes concealed histories and is a powerful means of truth-telling.

Exhibiting extensively since the 1980s, Watson co-represented Australia at the 1997 Venice Biennale. In 2006 she won the Works on Paper Award at the 23rd National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Award and received the National Gallery of Victoria’s 2006 Clemenger Contemporary Art Award. Watson was included in the 2012 Biennale of Sydney and in 2018 the Art Gallery of New South Wales staged the edge of memory, a major exhibition of her work. Recent exhibitions include Réclaimer la terre – Reclaim the earth, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2022; 14th Gwangju Biennale: Soft and Weak like Water, Gwangju, South Korea, 2023;  Lines: Aligning your consciousness with the flow at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan, 2024; Judy Watson, a solo exhibition in China, at Aranya Art Center, Beidaihe New Area, Hebei Province; Echoes Unveiled: Art by First Nations Women from Australia, Artizon Museum, Tokyo, 2025; Briser la glace / Splitting Ice, Manif d’art 12 – La biennale de Québec, 2026; and Rising Voices: Contemporary Art from Asia, Australia and the Pacific at the V&A, London, a collaboration with Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), 2026. A significant survey of Judy Watson’s practice, mudunama kundana wandaraba jarribirri, was presented by QAGOMA in 2024.

Watson has received commissions for public art projects across Australia, including wurreka, Bunjilaka (Aboriginal Cultural Centre), Melbourne Museum (50-metre etched zinc wall); fire and water at Reconciliation Place, Canberra, 2007; ngarunga nangama: calm water dream at 200 George Street, Sydney, 2016; tow row for the Gallery of Modern Art’s 10th Anniversary in Brisbane, 2016; and bara, overlooking Dubbagullee (Bennelong Point) and Warrane (Circular Quay), Sydney, 2022.

Her works are held in significant Australian and international collections, including all Australian state galleries; National Gallery of Australia; Artizon Museum, Tokyo; British Museum; Fondation Opale, Lens, Switzerland; Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, University of Virginia; MCA/ TATE; Museo delle Civiltà, Rome; St. Louis Art Museum, Missouri; 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa.

Watson is an Adjunct Professor at Griffith University, and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Art History by The University of Queensland in 2018.

Judy Watson is represented by Milani Gallery, Meanjin (Brisbane) and Tolarno galleries, Narrm (Melbourne). 

Learn more about Judy Watson.

Lisa Waup is a mixed-cultural First Nations artist and curator, born in Narrm (Melbourne), whose multidisciplinary practice encompasses a diverse range of media, including weaving, printmaking, photography, sculpture, fashion, and digital art. With a deep connection to the symbolic power of materials, her work reflects her personal experiences, family history, Country, and broader historical narratives.

Through her practice, Waup weaves together threads of lost history, ancestral relationships, motherhood, and the passage of time, culminating in contemporary expressions that speak to her past, present, and future. In her words, "As a multidisciplinary artist, I'm guided to utilize so many different mediums—they really talk to me—and in turn they're able to explain my story in different ways, they all connect with each other. Material diversity is a big part of what I do in my practice—I'm happy to move across various media and am always open to exploring new materials and approaches that connect to the work I am making at the time."

Learn more about Lisa Waup.