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17 April – 17 May 2025

Alana Hunt is an artist and writer working across multiple media—including film, video, photography, publications, and public events—to reveal the mechanisms of oppression and colonial violence disguised in everyday life and legislation. Her approach is a deeply personal and meticulously researched examination of non-Indigenous life, culture and society, that draws from her lived experiences on Gija and Miriwoong Countries in the east Kimberley region of Western É«ÇéÍøÕ¾, where she lived for over a decade.

Hunt borrows from Relational and Conceptual Art and Institutional Critique traditions, with a focus on archives, legal documents, documentary photographs and footage to hone in on the present. She uses information systems and hierarchies to reflect and critique bureaucratic modes of knowledge and information.

The centrepiece of this exhibition is Alana Hunt’s work Surveilling a Crime Scene, shot on Super 8mm film, which explores the materialisation of non-Indigenous life on Miriwoong Country in and around the town of Kununurra. By connecting historic and contemporary footage, and exploring the enaction of failed agricultural enterprises, a dam, tourism and leisure, the work outlines how colonial power shapes contemporary life in this region.

This exhibition includes several other works that challenge viewers to recognise the ongoing nature of colonialism, such as Nine Hundred and Sixty Seven, where ex Rio Tinto CEO Sam Walsh AO recites the project summaries of 967 applications seeking legal permission to “destroy, damage or alter an Aboriginal site” under legislation that enabled the destruction of Juukan Gorge by his former employer.

Surveilling a Crime Scene was supported by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund and Sheila Foundation’s Michela and Adrian Fini Fellowship. It premiered in a solo exhibition at the Northern Centre for Contemporary Art, Darwin in October 2023. A Very Clear Picture, In Plain Sight and Nine Hundred and Sixty Seven were produced during a residency with the legal team of the Kimberley Land Council (2020-23) as part of SPACED’s Rural Utopias Program.

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On the 16 April 2025, we hosted the opening celebration of Alana Hunt: Surveilling a Crime Scene (and other examinations)