Current and Upcoming Exhibitions

In 1828, a fleet of three ships was chartered to establish a new colony at Swan River in Western Australia. The HMS Challenger set sail first, followed by the Parmelia and HMS Sulphur which launched from Spithead off Portsmouth, England in February 1829.
One of the regiment’s soldiers was Lieutenant Robert Dale (1810-1856), whose duty it was to explore the new land and document the expedition. He made extensive trips along the Canning River, throughout the York district and King George’s Sound resulting in the most ambitious attempt to depict the Australian landscape in print-making during the first half of the nineteenth century. The six paintings which are collectively titled Minang Boodjar re-examine the 19th century propaganda circulated by Dale which depicted civilised relations between settlers and the Nyoongar. By recreating sections of Dale’s familiar landscape etchings as paintings at an epic scale, Pease focuses our attention on the troubled notion of a romanticised account of colonisation.