Barra | Juanita McLauchlan

15 February - 6 April 2025

Gallery 2

Barra, meaning thread in the Gamilaraay language of Juanita McLauchlan’s grandmother’s country in northern New South Wales, connects two distinct, yet interrelated areas of the artist’s practice – textiles and printmaking. As a thread stitches, uniting and securing elements together, McLauchlan’s work speaks to her sense of continuity with family, Country and culture, through generations past, present and future.

Working with recycled woollen blankets, brushtail possum fur, wool and cotton thread, linen and gold leaf, McLauchlan’s textiles are eco-printed with branches, bark and leaves from the trees and shrubs found on Wiradjuri Country / Wagga Wagga, NSW where she has lived for more than 20 years. Extending the artist’s initial studies in printmaking, and presented alongside a selection of her earlier prints, McLauchlan’s textiles fuse the introduced with the endemic - the woollen blankets, a staple of Aboriginal families since colonisation, and the plants that grow in the region historically and today.

Juanita McLauchlan, Everywhen, 2023 (detail), woollen blanket, brushtail possum fur, woollen and cotton threads, woodcut on linen, gold leaf, contact printed with Australian indigenous plants and using iron mordant, 197 x 154cm.