System Release: Artist Talk and Curator's Walk
Join Dr. Emily Cormack for a curator’s tour of System Release. Cormack will provide context and reveal connections between the works, offering deeper insight into the exhibition and the ideas within it.
The tour will be followed by artist talks with Dane Mitchell and Megan Cope.
Dane Mitchell (Aotearoa/Australia) speaks to his works Remembering and Forgetting (Venn) (2016) and Remedies for Remembering (AI) and Forgetting (NaCl) (2015–16), which think through the logic of homeopathy and draw attention to the role of the Museum as a filtering device responsible for both the remembering and forgetting of stories. Mitchell’s work invites the Museum to acknowledge its role in the construction and representation of history and ideas and offers the possibility of ‘healing’ through dousing and critical reflection.
Megan Cope’s A great depression (2024) explores the rejuvenation of the Kinyinyarra (oyster) beds at Minjerribah (North Stradbroke Island). The work responds to the decimation of the Quandamooka people’s oyster beds during the colonial period. The middens that populated the coastline of Stradbroke Island before colonisation were mountainous, forming an architecture of inhabitation that was a cumulative record of sovereign occupation of First Peoples. Cope reinstates these midden towers, rebuilding their form and reclaiming their sovereign legacy.
Saturday 20 June, 2–4pm. Free with Museum Entry.
Dr. Emily Cormack
Emily Cormack is Head of Exhibitions and Programs at TarraWarra Museum of Art. Recent positions have included Artistic Director and Curator of The Melbourne Art Fair (2020–22) and Merri-bek Council (2019–23), and Curator of The TarraWarra Biennial (2018), Curator — Primavera at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, and Curator, Gertrude Contemporary (2006–16). She holds a BFA from Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland University; an MA in Art Curatorship from the University of Melbourne; and a PhD from Monash University (2021).
Megan Cope
Megan Cope is a multidisciplinary artist and Quandamooka woman from the Moreton Bay region of South East Queensland. Her works are informed by her community and heritage. Cope creates sculptural installations and public art. Her socially engaged practice focuses on Indigenous stewardship, the continuum of culture, and custodial ethics as contemporary art practice. Her work is deeply rooted in Indigenous knowledge and collaborative processes, highlighting the interrelations of land and sea ecosystems and connecting communities. She has exhibited widely in Australia and internationally, and her art often invites public participation, blurring the lines between maker, material and audience. Recent highlights include Kinyingarra Guwinyanba (2022–), a living sculpture made on Country, for Country, installed on Minjerribah in Moreton Bay, and iterations shown at Hawaii Triennial 25: Aloha No (2025) and Busan Biennale 2022 (South Korea). Her practice has also featured in Sharjah Biennial 16 (2025), Thailand Biennale 2025, 24th Biennale of Sydney (2024), Soils at Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2024), and Reclaim the Earth, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2022).
Dane Mitchell
Dane Mitchell was Aotearoa New Zealand’s representative at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019. His practice explores the tensions between containment and the uncontainable, examining structures like museums and encyclopedias and the wilful encroachment upon these structures by contagious forces such as vapours, aromas and disappearances. He works with materials including technologies of material capture and dispersal, scents, remedies, glass and dust. Mitchell has held solo exhibitions at Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Institut D’Art Contemporain, Lyon; Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington; Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki; and Govett-Brewster, New Plymouth, among others. He has participated in thirteen international biennales, including Venice Biennale (2019), Biennale of Sydney (2016), Liverpool Biennial (2012), Bangkok Biennale (2020), Gwangju Biennale (2012) and TarraWarra Biennial (2008).
Related exhibitions
TarraWarra International 2026: System Release
- Now Showing
- Closes 5 July 2026
