Image credit: Steven Rhall First time visited, long time lived (Taungurung, Bonnie Doon) 2012.

Kulin Project: Return to Country
Steven Rhall
Exhibition dates: 19 October 2020 to 22 March 2021

These four images were made in 2012. They form as part of a larger experiential-based photographic series of images called Kulin Project for which the artist, Steven Rhall, researched and responded photographically to each of the five language group areas of the Kulin Nation and their imagined borders. The impetus of this project responded both to the idea of cultural representation within art and Rhall's own ambiguous Taungurung identity. The remediation of each language group as an image, presented these everyday scenes where the idea of cultural representation was felt more in the act of making each image rather than the image-based outcome. The scenes depicted, nonetheless, came to announce that Country was 'everywhere' despite the absence of common pictorial representations that are otherwise affiliated with First Nations cultural expression. These four images were taken on Taungurung land and signify the idea of a 'return to Country' for Rhall.