Carolyn Barnes

Inside the Mirage – which features a dialogue between two Australian artists shaped by migration – shows how culture is continually reborn through exchange. Mikala Dwyer’s Flat Square Circle Sculpture, 2019. At a time of increasing polarisation and hardened certainties, Inside the Mirage explores how cultural exchange shapes histories and identities.

Ngarn Wa’ngal: Art of the gum tree is the third major exhibition staged by the Potter Museum of Art since its reopening in 2025. Following 65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art and A velvet ant, a flower and a bird, it extends the museum’s focus on exhibitions that challenge established art history narratives by connecting art to wider social, political and environmental debates. Organised around a single botanical subject, Art of the gum tree initially seems the most narrowly conceived.

The late 1980s and early 1990s mark the beginning of contemporary art in China, but its emergence remains poorly understood. Frequently framed through Western perspectives, Chinese art of this period is often cast as belatedly catching up to international developments.