About the Artwork

This artwork represents our people doing business on country that is recovering from colonisation; our lands taken over, our cultures decimated, and our families separated, causing hardship, despair, and loss of hope.

The many years of oppression to our cultures that our families and our Elders have had to endure has meant that we have needed to adapt and learn to engage and address a wide range of issues impacting on our families, in both traditional and contemporary ways. We are concerned with strengthening and reconnecting to our countries, cultures and families; to nurturing cultural identity and pride whilst still trying to carry our immediate and collective business as First Peoples of Country, but, on Shifting Sands.

The strong representation of our connected communities in the foreground of the painting symbolises the strength of our people as a group, displaying a new sense of cultural identity and pride, and a place of belonging while acknowledging the trauma affecting our families in the present.

We are rising to once again, take control of our own destinies, linking up strongly to each other across an uncertain terrain that will once again become solid as we become reconnected at all levels within a spirit of hope.

About the Artist

Aunty Roma Winmar, Noongar artist, was born in Gnowangerup, a small town in the southwest of Western Australia, in 1944. She has had numerous exhibitions and her artwork has been presented nationally and internationally. She is a Noongar language teacher at the Moorditj Noongar Community College in Middle Swan, Western Australia.

Artwork: Original Painting