Wadawurrung artist Dr Deanne Gilson joins Banksia to yarn about their new exhibition Still Sacred & Golden which is currently on display at the Koorie Heritage Trust until 18 September 2022. Deanne also has exhbition Wadawurrung Dja: Awakening Country at the National Wool Museum from 24 June - 13 November 2022.

In discussing the background to the Still Sacred & Golden exhibition Deanne explains “Still sacred - I’m really saying that our knowledge is still there - it was just hidden and lost for a while.”

“And the golden, I’m currently living on my ancestral country of Ballarat on Wadawurrung land, its known for the goldfields but the gold was of no use to my ancestors - so for me country is golden and we’re golden, we are the gold - it’s kind of a bit of a metaphor, but real gold is country and ourselves as people.”

Deanne also talks about their exhibition Wadawurrung Dja: Awakening Country at the National Wool Museum:

“It references the six Kulin seasons and it really depicted six cultural trees of knowledge.. They’re all painted in white ochre, so the white ochre is what we paint our bodies up and is connected to my ancestors and their spirits.”

In 2019 Deanne worked on Murrup Laarr which is an installation of ancestral stones in Ballarat.

“Murrup is spirit and Laarr is our Wadawurrung word for stone - so I reproduced a contemporary version of a stone circle in basalt stones”

“What I did was kind of plant my ancestral knowledges and our stories back on country and by put back, I’m kind of in that act of reclaiming and rejuvenating, and putting back what was taken and telling our stories”

Still Sacred & Golden is at the Koorie Heritage Trust until 18 September 2022

Wadawurrung Dja: Awakening Country is at the National Wool Museum from 24 June - 13 November 2022