Table of Contents
By Dr. Billy Gruner
The Hawkesbury Regional Gallery marks its 20th anniversary at the Deerubbin Centre with a powerful and timely exhibition titled Burnt into Memory — a major curatorial project reflecting on the catastrophic Black Summer bushfires of 2019–2020.
Curated in-house, the show sets out to explore the complex emotional and psychological impact of those fire events — focusing on themes of reflection, healing, resilience, and forward momentum. As the curators note:
"In the summer of 2019-2020, communities across Australia experienced some of the worst bushfires in living memory. Known as the Black Summer Bushfires, the impact was catastrophic — not just physically, but emotionally and culturally as well."
The exhibition brings together an impressive lineup of artists — Sarah Allely and Bill Code, Wona Bae and Charlie Lawler, Katherine Boland, Penelope Cain, Cathy Franzi, Jody Graham, Anna Glynn, Freya Jobbins, Laura Jones, Gary Shinfield, Leanne Tobin, Leanne Watson, Julie Williams, and Freedom Wilson. Each was invited to respond creatively to the idea of memory and fire.
This is a fully funded project, and it’s important to note that initial grant support was secured in part by showcasing raw, grassroots artworks and videos made during or immediately after the fires — often by local artists who lived through them. Yet curiously, those original works were not included in the final exhibition.
Understandably, that decision has sparked quiet controversy among some in the community. Several of those early contributors have described the final show as a “scripted perspective,” suggesting the curatorial process may have favoured conceptual interpretation over lived experience. Is this a broader trend in contemporary curation — to shape narratives from a distance? Or simply a one-off curatorial decision?
In fairness, each exhibiting artist presents thoughtful, deeply respectful responses. It’s clear the curators sought to evoke a shared space of remembrance and emotional complexity. But one wonders if there could have been room — even a corner of the gallery — for direct contributions from those on the ground in 2019. Artists like Leane Clough and Judy Millar, whose collaborative Indigenous mural captured profound local grief and resilience, or the community-made “Victims of Fire” video works that helped secure the project’s initial funding.
Indeed, the exhibition includes visitor engagement elements — like signs held up by attendees — which visually echo those early grassroots video projects. That overlap is powerful, if slightly bittersweet.
Still, full credit to the curators for tackling a subject as raw and important as this. Burnt into Memory confronts a shared trauma that is still close to the surface in the Hawkesbury and across the country. The gallery deserves acknowledgment for using its 20th anniversary to hold space for reflection, and perhaps even to reignite a conversation about who gets to tell the stories that define us.
