Wadawurrung Dja: Awakening Country - the Art of Deanne Gilson

Wadawurrung Dja: Awakening Country is the first solo exhibition by Dr Deanne Gilson, a proud Wadawurrung emerging elder and an award-winning multi-media visual artist working primarily in painting, fabric design and clay. Gilson's exhibition features a vibrant mix of twenty paintings and textile works. The exhibition will include 10 newly created contemporary ceremonial cloaks using Gilson's unique fabric designs. Through her work, Gilson captures the changes throughout the six Wadawurrung seasons by painting her Dja (Country), people, plants and animals. Gilson uses her Wadawurrung Creation Story as the beginning point within all cultural artworks. The Creation narrative extends to the elements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water as well as portraying the six Kulin seasons. Time is traversed through multi layers of cultural memory and experiences that take in before and after colonisation, the sky country and under country. Gilson uses the process of art making as an extension of ancestral ceremonies and lived experience. This allows her to draw on the notion of spiritual connections that cannot be seen but held within the creative process.