Destination North

Julie McEnerny / Melanie Hava / Cathy Snow / Hannah Parker

27 Jun –
22 Aug 2020


Destination North is an initiative of the Cairns Art Gallery that comprises an exhibition and an interactive artists’ studio space. Through their works in the exhibition, each of the women artists tells a uniquely different story about connections to life forms and ecosystems in Far North Queensland.

Hannah Parker’s series of watercolours interprets ways in which plants and creatures of great beauty and energy exist in tropical north Queensland despite a threat of imminent extinction. Julie McEnerny was inspired by the exotic plants in the region, all of which need the soaking rains of a tropical wet season to flourish. Cathy Snow’s works on paper feature flora and fauna as well as her mother’s stories, including one about an auntie who used broken freshwater mussel shells to incise body markings in her arm to represent the three rivers on their traditional country. Melanie Hava’s works portray the Palmerston rainforest region which is home to the Ma:Mu people. For this exhibition she has removed people from her whimsical rainforest scenes. In so doing the forests become silent. Melanie believes that it is the sound of the Ma:Mu people living traditional lives in the forests that bring them to life.

 

Selected works

 

Installation images

The Cairns Art Gallery acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land on which we work and live. We pay our respects to Elders past and present. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware that this website may contain images, names or voices of deceased persons in photographs, film or text.