Waterways

Water teaches us that nothing stands alone. To follow a river, a bog, a glacier, or an estuary is to move through worlds that precede us and worlds that will outlast us. In its motion, water gathers stories, sediments histories, sutures continents, and reveals the frictions that shape our present planetary condition…It is migrant, cyclical, vulnerable, and yet infinitely resilient.
–The Word for World Is Water: World-Building and Creative Resistance Through Liquid Alliances, ed. Katya Garcia-Anton/Margarida Mendes, Spector Books, Leipzig, 2026

In Wurundjeri Woiwurrung language, Tarrawarra translates approximately as ‘slow moving waters’. The new rehang of the Visible Art Storage in the Eva and Marc Besen Centre, Waterways, invites us to explore how water has been depicted and evoked by Australian artists since 1945 in the TarraWarra Museum of Art Collection.

Artists have always sought to capture the beauty of the natural world. Beaches, rivers, forests, waterfalls, gardens, and harbours have long been subjects of the Australian identity and subconscious. The prominent display screens of the Visible Art Storage will feature a selection of curated and iconic moments from the canon of Australian Art History including Brett Whitley’s ultramarine Sydney Harbour view from Lavendar Bay; Leonard French’s multi-coloured turtles and fish swimming in the ocean; Janet Laurence’s mossy forest canopies, at risk of deforestation; Brent Harris’ surreal monochromatic ‘swamp’ tendrils floating up and down; the strength of Judy Watson’s fish spine, melding into her stained canvas; Imants Tillers’ metaphysical appropriation of a colonial Eugene von Guerard waterfall painting; and the glistening abstract brushstrokes waving through Janet Dawson’s ‘Ripple’.  All of these works capture the life-giving force of water, and the powerful ways it sustains and nourishes our everyday ecologies.

Featured artists include Daniel Boyd, Arthur Boyd, Janet Dawson, John Davis, Leonard French, Brent Harris, Inge King, Euan Macleod, Hilarie Mais, Mandy Martin, John Olsen, Edwin Tanner, Imants Tillers, Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, Janet Laurence, Danila Vassilieff, Judy Watson, Fred Williams, Brett Whitely, William Wright and others.