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A growing chorus of concern has emerged from Hawkesbury locals who feel sidelined by the “Burnt Into Memory” exhibition at Hawkesbury Regional Gallery — a project originally pitched as a tribute to the region’s Black Summer bushfire survivors and their stories.
Instead, many are questioning why the exhibition relied heavily on artists from outside the community, while ignoring internationally recognised artworks and video documentation created by local residents who directly experienced the disaster.
Of the 14 artists featured in Burnt Into Memory, only a small number had substantial personal or creative ties to the Hawkesbury region. While artists such as Jody Graham and Gary Shinfield undertook residencies in Bilpin and Mt Wilson, many others were based in Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, or even overseas — with limited or no lived experience of the fires that devastated the region.
“It’s not that these artists aren’t talented,” said a local arts advocate. “But when an exhibition about our trauma and our survival is curated without deeply engaging those who lived it, it becomes more about aesthetic than authenticity.”
“The criticism reflects a wider issue in the Australian arts industry, where regional narratives are increasingly outsourced to visiting artists and academics. The result is often polished but detached works that miss the lived nuance of local stories” says Dr Billy Gruner Hawkesbury Gazette Art Critic
Community members are now calling for a rethink in how future cultural projects are developed — with a stronger commitment to ground-up storytelling and direct representation from those who lived through the events being portrayed.
“If our stories aren’t told by us, they’re rewritten for someone else’s audience,” said one survivor. “We’ve already lost so much — let’s not lose our voice too.”
