New commissions by leading contemporary First Nations artists Lorraine Connelly-Northey, Janet Fieldhouse and Glenda Nicholls will feature alongside a works by acclaimed Australian artist Rosalie Gascoigne in a major new exhibition at Bundanon gallery in 2026.
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.
Bundanon CEO Rachel Kent said the gallery was delighted to announce its first exhibition for 2026.
"We are proud to present Gascoigne's renowned works alongside major new commissions by leading contemporary First Nations artists," she said.
"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".
New commissions by Connelly-Northey, Fieldhouse and Nicholls, created during residencies at Bundanon, continue the organisation's longstanding commitment to site-responsive artmaking. The works reflect the cultural resonance of materials and the stories embedded in place.
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.
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.
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.
Glenda Nicholls Drag Net, 2021. Image: courtesy of the artist, photographer Andrew Curtis.
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.
The 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.
