Songlines & Sightlines
Blacktown Arts
First iteration: 22 May – 19 June 2021
Second iteration:18 May – 2 July 2022
Artists: Leanne Mulgo Watson, Peter Rush, Erin Wilkins and Bundeluk Watson
Curator: Tian Zhang
Assistant Curator (second iteration): A’isyiyah Prahastono
Songlines & Sightlines was an invitation to consider Blacktown’s past, present and future. The project was a collaboration between Dharug artists and knowledge holders Leanne Mulgo Watson and Erin Wilkins, with artist and architect Peter Rush, and featuring additional images by the late Dharug artist Bundeluk Watson.
Songlines are the Dreaming pathways that the ancestral beings travelled along to create country while singing the land to life. Songlines are the oral maps connecting all countries and people together while guiding them across the lands as they travel; Dharug people sing stories of the landscape teaching them the locations, migration and significance of each place.
In this interactive exhibition, the artists provided outlines of plants, animals and the human environment on the walls of the gallery. Visitors were invited to colour in and add their own drawings and notes for Blacktown — past, present and future.
Video produced by Hypereel Brand. Courtesy of Blacktown Arts.