Thursday 22 December 2022 to Saturday 2 March 2024

The art of healing: Australian Indigenous bush medicine follows the premise of Tjukurrpa (dreaming). It looks at Indigenous healing practice as past, present and future simultaneously. It presents examples of healing practice from the many distinct and varied Indigenous communities throughout Australia shown through contemporary art practice.

For example, Gija elder and artist Shirley Purdie has spent years  illustrating the bush medicine of her region near Warmun in the Kimberly. While Treahna Hamm reveals in Yorta Yorta Bush Medicine First Aid Kit the use of medicinal plants in Victoria.

The exhibition is accompanied by a major catalogue with the perspectives of Indigenous communities represented. The key to this exhibition is revealing that traditional Indigenous healing is a current practice informed by the past and an intrinsic part of the life of indigenous people in Australia.

Rosie Ngwarraye Ross commented on  collecting bush medicine:

'We look for these plants in rocky country, we can find a little purple plum that we use to clean the kidneys and sometimes for flu. The yellow flowers are used for scabies; we boil them and add water and wash our skin with it. The pink flowers we use for when we have sore eyes; we mix the flowers with water and the colour changes to a light green.'

Communicating this love, knowledge and appreciation of Country and all it provides is important to Rosie Ngwarraye Ross, because ‘it keeps culture strong’.

Works from this exhibition toured internationally in 2019 to Bush House, King’s College London (14 May to 7 July), and to the Berlin Museum of Medical History (BerlinerMedizinhistorisches Museum der Charité) (24 October 2019 to 2 February 2020).