SEE

The Carousel of Invisibility: Julie Visible

5 June to 2 August 2025

‘The Carousel of Invisibility’ is an evocative interpretation across the life of the female bushranger Jessie Hickman. Seeking to unearth and reveal the elusive Hickman, visual artist Julie Visible (aka Julie Williams) ventures into isolated bushland along the fringes of the Wollemi region, where she encounters traces and murmurs of Hickman’s life. This body of work is a reflection upon human inhabitation, identity and the invisible history of women.

Visible messes with linear time by deconstructing and reassembling analogue photography, digital video, smatterings of AI, sounds from the bush and found objects retrieved from the ground. The layered imagery within her painterly, photo-media works imbues a subtle sense of unreality. Natural objects, people, horses and a baby become symbols; depicting fragments and impressions of the lightness and darkness of the lingering apparitions within the bushland frequented by Hickman in the early 1900s.

Visible passes over the contradictory and disjointed narratives that abound around Hickman’s life, in favour of a light filled transcendence of flight and movement. It is here that Julie Visible and Jessie Hickman fall together in time, enabling the spirit of place to slowly and quietly endow their stories with imagination within a regional contemporary arts framework.

Women on Country

5 June to 11 October 2025

Michelle Earl – Wonnarua/Darkinjung | Judith Franklin – Darkinjung/Wonnarua | Robyn Hutchinson – Wiradjuri | Lesley Salem – Wonnarua | | Mandy Wild – Biripi/Worimi

For Aboriginal people, Country is not simply land—it encompasses everything: animals, plants, waterways, landforms, and skies. This relationship is spiritual, cultural, and physical, rooted in deep, ancient systems of knowledge and belonging. Despite the enduring trauma of colonisation and forced removal, connection to Country remains strong.

Country is central to identity and community, linking individuals to their ancestors, to cultural learning, to language, and to law. It provides a foundation for spiritual wellbeing and imposes a sacred responsibility to care for the land for future generations.

The Dreaming—stories passed through generations—explains the spiritual origins of the land and informs Aboriginal people’s relationship with it. Totems create networks of responsibility and kinship through animals, features, and elements of Country. While often overlooked, even urban environments are part of Country. Through art, activism, and language, these connections can be revitalised and made visible.

Country is not a possession, it is a living entity—a source of knowledge, spirit, and life.

Art Tracks VIII: Boundless Boundaries

27 March to 2 August 2025

For decades, artists have explored the delicate interplay between exposure and isolation, visibility and solitude. Long before the digital age, the struggle between wanting to be seen and the fear of being truly known has shaped the human experience.

This exhibition brings together past winners and finalists of the Muswellbrook Art Prize, spanning works from the 1970s to today. From Strom Gould’s exploration of public anonymity in ‘Pedestrians’ (1970) to David Fairbairn’s intimate pandemic-era portraits ‘Double Lives’ (2022), ‘Boundless Boundaries’ reveals how artists have continually grappled with themes of vulnerability, detachment, and the complexities of human interaction.

Whether responding to urbanisation, social change, or digital transformation, each work contributes to an ongoing dialogue about presence and absence. The act of self-representation—through portraiture, abstraction, or symbolic imagery—exposes the paradox of being both connected and alone.