In 2022 Cairns Art Gallery presented a second solo exhibition of works by Torres Strait Islander Elder and artist, Segar Passi. Entitled Meriba Ged A Gur it extended the scope of his first solo exhibition in 2014, entitled Segar Passi: Bakei – 1960s to the Present.

This exhibition forms part of the Cairns Art Gallery online First Nations Research Archive developed as part of the Gallery’s online Legacy Archive produced to celebrate the Gallery’s 30th anniversary.

Meriba Ged A Gur celebrated Passi’s 80th birthday and the 30th anniversary of the Australian High Court’s landmark Mabo determination that paved the way for the recognition and protection of native title across Australia.

Passi is a self-taught artist who has a remarkable ability to paint from memory, recalling details with absolute accuracy based on acute observational skills. Over the years, he has produced an impressive body of paintings that capture, in exquisite detail, birds, fish, plants, people, daily island activities, festivities, ancestral stories and cosmology that are all part of Ailan life.

Cairns Art Gallery has the second largest collection of Segar Passi’s works in Australia. The exhibition included 14 works, from the Gallery’s Collection, and works on loan from private collectors and major public galleries, including the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), Gab Titui, National Gallery of Victoria, and the Margaret Lawrie Collection, State Library of Queensland.

To support the exhibition, the Gallery produced a publication as an important record of the artist’s life and works, with essays by Peggy Kasabad Lane, formerly Cairns Art Gallery Assistant Curator and curator of the exhibition, and Diane Moon, formerly Curator, Indigenous Fibre at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art.