Ngununggula, the Southern Highlands first regional art gallery, has officially opened 'Stories From A Small Country Town', a major exhibition headlining its Spring/Summer exhibition season.
Featuring two of Australia's foremost Indigenous artists, Archie Moore and Daniel Boyd, Stories From A Small Country Town is an exploration of memory and belonging, tracing the Odyssey-like journeys of both artists.
On display from 31 October 2026 to 14 February 2027, the exhibition explores the heritage and belonging of Boyd, a Kudjala, Ghungalu, Wangerriburra, Wakka Wakka, Gubbi Gubbi, Kuku Yalanji, Bandjalung and Yuggera man with ni-Vanuatu heritage, and of Moore, a Kamilaroi/Bigambul man.
"Ngununggula is delighted to present Stories from a small country town, which features three revered First Nations voices," Ngununggula assistant director Olivia Welch said.
"Though their practices take very different forms, Moore and Boyd both contemplate personal and cultural journeys. Conceived by Djon Mundine OAM almost two decades ago, we're thrilled to see this incredible exhibition now realised at Ngununggula."
Curated by Bandjalung man and Southern Highlands resident Djon Mundine OAM — one of Australia's most senior and highly revered First Nations curatorial voices — Stories From A Small Country Town brings together reflections which explore cultural identity through deeply personal and sensory means rather than subjecting viewers to overt political statements.
Moore draws on key signifiers of identity in a diverse selection of portraits of himself and his father, Stanley, spanning 20 years of practice, while Boyd recalls personal history to reframe colonial narratives.
"They're the two most deeply thinking Aboriginal artists in their practice — it's not just about ecstatic exclamations about injustices or anything else," exhibition curator Djon Mundine said.
"They do it in a much more subtle way than that. In considering both artists, the question becomes, 'How do you create your own life in the end? How do you create your own identity?'... That's what I felt with both Daniel and Archie."
Mundine has long described both artists' life stories as a "meandering" journey away from, and back to, home and identity: Archie Moore's from the small Queensland town of Tara and Daniel Boyd's connected to his Vanuatu ancestry and Queensland's sugar-cane history.
Mundine draws a parallel with the structure of myth and literature, from The Odyssey to the magic realism of Gabriel García Márquez.
Boyd has transformed Ngununggula's gallery windows with a site-specific installation using his signature dot motif, applying black adhesive vinyl to the glass to create a filter effect — extending the window installation technique he has used in works including Untitled (-33.894728, 151.189099) (2019, Kaldor Public Art Projects) and the window segment of Doan (2024, Art Basel Hong Kong).
Boyd's lauded dot technique is emblematic of dark matter in the universe — a metaphor for the unacknowledged.
Other works on display include pieces from the Up in Smoke Tour series (2011-16), made from watercolour and archival glue on photocopies of First Fleet collection imagery housed in skull boxes from the Natural History Museum, London; The Mirror Stage (2025), Boyd's eighth solo exhibition with STATION, which draws on Lacanian psychoanalysis to question the authority of historical representation; a work from the No Beard series (2005-07), the National Gallery of Australia's Captain No Beard, which recasts John Webber's 1782 portrait of Captain James Cook as a pirate; and Untitled (MINCC) (2014), part of a body of paintings referencing Rebbelib, Marshall Islands stick charts used to navigate the Pacific.
The presentation of works by Moore includes Remnants of My Father, developed for the 2026 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Yield Strength in collaboration with Australian precious metals group Pallion.
Remnants of My Father is a portrait of Archie's father, Stanley Moore (1908-1994). Rather than being presented with his father's likeness, audiences come to understand Stanley through the objects and papers he left behind: a hand-drawn map of a gold deposit, a licence to possess valuable minerals, a business advertisement, war medals, a bedside bucket of urine and dentures with a gold cap.
Moore has described the memories of his father as the golden thread running through the work, connecting eight forged objects and reproduced documents from his father's estate.
"The work speaks to (false) hope, (empty) promises, (thin) veneers and (pipe) dreams," he said.
Remnants of My Father continues Moore's use of familial portraiture that does not rely on likeness, but rather on olfactory memories, genealogical information caught within "spiderweb" structures (shown in Venice) and architectural recreations, including his "house of memory" installations.
Moore was awarded the Golden Lion for Best National Participation at La Biennale di Venezia 2024 for kith and kin in the Australia Pavilion.
The exhibition also draws on works from Moore's Mīal series (2022) — a fractured self-portrait comprising 34 monochrome paintings based on the skin tones of the artist's own body parts — alongside earlier works interrogating the language used to classify race: Blood Fraction (2015), a sliding colour scale of skin tones responding to public commentators who question Aboriginal people's authenticity, and a selection from Moore's early Comic Paintings (2005).
Also included is Bannertree floor (2021), a floor painting recreating from memory the linoleum pattern of the house in which Moore grew up in Tara, central Queensland.
'Stories From A Small Country Town' is on display from 31 October 2026 to 14 February 2027.
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