Bundanon has announced a major exhibition of works by acclaimed Australian artist Rosalie Gascoigne (1917-1999), presented alongside significant new commissions by leading contemporary First Nations women artists Lorraine Connelly-Northey, Janet Fieldhouse and Glenda Nicholls.
Presented from 7 March-14 June 2026, Rosalie Gascoigne: Sky, Earth, Water will showcase Gascoigne’s poetic assemblages of salvaged found materials, whilst evoking the textures and spirit of rural Australia. Bundanon will present over 20 key works on loan from major institutions including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, Heide Museum of Modern Art, TarraWarra Museum of Art and from significant private collections.
Rachel Kent, CEO, Bundanon said: “Bundanon is delighted to announce our first exhibition for 2026, ‘Rosalie Gascoigne: Sky, Earth, Water’, celebrating the work of this respected artist and deepening its connection to place – something Bundanon has an unparalleled capacity to do as a museum immersed in the landscape. We are proud to present Gascoigne’s renowned works alongside major new commissions by leading contemporary First Nations artists. Together, these parallel presentations create a powerful dialogue across generations and perspectives, celebrating the enduring role of landscape, memory and material in shaping artistic expression”.
Rosalie Gascoigne: Sky, Earth, Water explores the artist’s deep connection to the material landscape. Gascoigne’s works evoke massed white clouds, snaking bodies of water, and weathered grey and golden expanses inspired by the wheat fields of the Monaro region of south-eastern New South Wales. This focused exhibition illuminates the ongoing evolution of Gascoigne’s practice, which centred on the resonances between found, industrially-produced material and the Australian landscape. From smaller experimental studies through to some of her brightest, most iconic works, Sky, Earth, Water presents Gascoigne’s unique, evocative vision.
Bundanon’s layered environmental history resonates with the subject-matter and materiality of Gascoigne’s practice. Encompassing rocky escarpments, bushland, river flats, and agricultural grazing lands, its unique regional setting, situated on the mighty river system of the Shoalhaven, provides a framework for seeing Gascoigne’s work anew.
New Zealand-born, Australian-based artist Rosalie Gascoigne developed her practice later in life and became celebrated for her assemblages made from weathered, found materials. Transforming discarded road signs, timber and domestic remnants into radiant compositions, she captured the light, landscape and lived textures of the Monaro region. After her debut exhibition in the 1970s, she rose to national prominence and went on to be the first woman to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale in 1982, becoming a pioneering figure in Australian contemporary art.
New commissions by First Nations artists Lorraine Connelly-Northey, Janet Fieldhouse and Glenda Nicholls, created during residencies at Bundanon, continue the organisation’s longstanding commitment to site-responsive artmaking. These works reflect the cultural resonance of materials and the stories embedded in place.
Glenda Nicholls is a Waddi Waddi, Ngarrindjeri and Yorta Yorta artist and master weaver based in the Swan Hill region of Victoria. Gifted her net-making technique from her ancestors in a dream, she has since created a significant body of sculptural work reviving her ancestral practice and their deep connection to waterways, plants and grasses on her Country, ensuring its protection for future generations. Drawing on her time in residence, Nicholls is creating a large-scale new work that responds to Bangli / the Shoalhaven River.
Janet Fieldhouse is a Meriam Mer (Torres Strait) ceramic artist based in Cairns, Queensland. Her hand-built forms acknowledge Torres Strait traditions of navigation, living from the sea and the land, and women’s practices such as weaving body adornments for ceremony and scarification. Bringing together new and existing works, Fieldhouse’s work will focus on the bird life of the Shoalhaven region.
Lorraine Connelly-Northey was born and raised on the cultural boundaries of the Wamba Wamba and Wadi Wadi peoples in the Swan Hill region of north-western Victoria. Now living on her mother’s Country, Waradgerie (Wiradjuri) Country in New South Wales, she creates large-scale metal sculptures inspired by Aboriginal fibre bags, also known as bush bags. Engaging ambitiously with Bundanon’s expanded Art Museum spaces, Connelly-Northey will create an installation that is in conversation with the Dharawal and Dhurga stories of place.
Throughout 2026, the Boyd Collection Gallery will present a selection of works by Arthur Boyd drawn from its own collection in conversation with key paintings from the National Gallery of Australia: Sharing the National Collection program, including early explorations of the natural landscape. As a young person, Boyd lived with his artist grandfather on the Mornington Peninsula and wrote devotedly to his artist mother to report on the paintings he spent his days creating. This early, immediate engagement with the natural world shaped Boyd’s practice and, much later, was a cornerstone in the founding of Bundanon.
MEDIA CONTACTS
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Artwork Credit: Rosalie Gascoigne, Plenty, 1986
