Ngununggula, the Southern Highlands' first regional art gallery, announced on Thursday details of Stories from a small country town, a major exhibition to headline its Spring/Summer exhibition season.
Featuring two of Australia's foremost artists, Archie Moore and Daniel Boyd, Stories from a small country town is an exploration of memory and belonging, tracing the Odyssey-like journeys of both artists.
Presented from October 31 to February 14, it explores heritage and belonging for Boyd, a Kudjala, Ghungalu, Wangerriburra, Wakka Wakka, Gubbi Gubbi, Kuku Yalanji, Bandjalung and Yuggera man with ni-Vanuatu heritage, and Moore, a Kamilaroi/Bigambul man.
"Ngununggula is delighted to announce Stories from a small country town, which features three revered First Nations voices," said assistant director at Ngununggula, Olivia Welch.
"Though their practices take very different forms, Moore and Boyd both contemplate personal and cultural journeys.
"Conceived by Djon Mundine OAM almost two decades ago, we're thrilled to see this incredible exhibition realised at Ngununggula."
Curated by Bandjalung man and Southern Highlands resident Djon Mundine OAM, one of Australia's most senior and highly revered First Nations curatorial voices, Stories from a small country town brings together reflections that explore cultural identity through deeply personal and sensory means rather than subjecting viewers to overt political statements.
Moore draws on key signifiers of identity in a diverse selection of portraits of himself and his father, Stanley, spanning 20 years of practice, while Boyd recalls personal history to reframe colonial narratives.
"They're the two most deeply thinking Aboriginal artists in their practice — it's not just about ecstatic exclamations about injustices or anything else," Mundine said.
"They do it in a much more subtle way than that. In considering both artists, the question becomes, 'How do you create your own life in the end? How do you create your own identity? ... That's what I felt with both Daniel and Archie.'"
Mundine has long described both artists' life stories as a "meandering" journey away from, and back to, home and identity: Archie Moore's from the small Queensland town of Tara and Daniel Boyd's connected to his Vanuatu ancestry and Queensland's sugar-cane history. Mundine draws a parallel with the structure of myth and literature, from The Odyssey to the magic realism of Gabriel García Márquez.
Boyd will transform Ngununggula's gallery windows with a site-specific installation using his signature dot motif, applying black adhesive vinyl to the glass to create a filter effect — extending the window installation technique he has used in works including Untitled (-33.894728, 151.189099) (2019, Kaldor Public Art Projects) and the window segment of Doan (2024, Art Basel Hong Kong).
Boyd's lauded dot technique is emblematic of dark matter in the universe.
The presentation of works by Moore includes Remnants of My Father, developed for the 2026 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Yield Strength in collaboration with Australian precious metals group Pallion.
Remnants of My Father is a portrait of Archie's father, Stanley Moore (1908-1994).
Rather than being presented with his father's likeness, audiences come to understand Stanley through the objects and papers he left behind: a hand-drawn map of a gold deposit, a licence to possess valuable minerals, a business advertisement, war medals, a bedside bucket of urine and dentures with a gold cap. Moore has described the memories of his father as the golden thread running through the work, connecting eight forged objects and reproduced documents from his father's estate.
"The work speaks to (false) hope, (empty) promises, (thin) veneers and (pipe) dreams," he said.
The exhibition will also draw on works from Moore's Mīal series (2022), alongside earlier works interrogating the language used to classify race: Blood Fraction (2015), a sliding colour scale of skin tones responding to public commentators who question Aboriginal people's authenticity, and a selection from Moore's early Comic Paintings (2005). Also included is Bannertree floor (2021), a floor painting recreating from memory the linoleum pattern of the house in which Moore grew up in Tara, central Queensland.
Stories from a small country town will be presented at Ngununggula from the 31st of October 2026 to the 14th of February 2027.
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