Haunting honours the Murrumbidgee River and its communities of people and other living beings. It reveals how history – like the river – flows through the land and our lives.
Vic McEwan, the National Museum's 2015 artist-in-residence, created the large-scale still photography and video works in Haunting, in collaboration with curator George Main.
On cold winter nights, McEwan projected images of museum objects, old photographs and a time-worn map across the Murrumbidgee River, onto fog, mist and campfire smoke drifting over the dark water.
Vic McEwan, 2015 artist-in-residence:
The aim of the project was to remove objects from their Museum cabinets and project them into the active materiality of the places connected to their stories.
The ethereal images that evolved out of atmosphere honoured the material nature of the objects, along with their histories, place and time, and in the process the river and its turbulent history came alive in unexpected and sometimes mysterious ways.
Like the mist above the Murrumbidgee, the exhibition is one that lingers in the viewer’s memory and leads you to reconsider your own understanding of one of Australia’s great rivers.
Exhibition highlights
Hosting the exhibition
Haunting is available to tour nationally.
If you are interested in hosting this touring exhibition please contact: touring@nma.gov.au
Acknowledgements
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government’s Visions of Australia program.
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The Cad Factory is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW, the Sidney Myer Fund, Nelson Meers Foundation and W & A Johnson Family Foundation. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government’s Visions of Australia program.
Haunting was on show at:
- National Museum of Australia, Canberra, 23 February to 30 April 2023
- Blue Mountains Cultural Centre, New South Wales, 16 July to 4 September 2022
- Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery, Victoria, 3 October to 28 November 2021
- Tamworth Regional Gallery, New South Wales, 3 April to 16 May 2021
- Burnie Regional Art Gallery, Tasmania, 12 February to 21 March 2021
- Warrnambool Regional Art Gallery, Victoria, 12 to 15 November 2020
- Griffith Regional Art Gallery, New South Wales, 5 June to 2 August 2020
In our collection