A trail of smoke winds across the luxury storefronts outside QueensPlaza in Queen Street Mall. The Dior sign is swallowed first, then Burberry. A small grey-haired woman in a houndstooth suit moves towards the crowd, bathing each person in the smouldering flames.
When she reaches Birrunga Wiradyuri, he lets the smoke engulf him, twirling on the spot and emerging like an apparition. After the smoking ceremony, the crowd is still as the low echo of a didgeridoo breaks the quiet. The David Jones sign lights up and for the next eight minutes, all eyes are locked on the moving illumination surrounding it.
Each colourful design is based on a work held by Birrunga’s gallery. “These are reimagined artworks that tell cultural stories,” Birrunga explains later. “Having an arena like QueensPlaza is an amazing opportunity to present First Nations visual narratives, and continue to make opportunities available.
” Meanjin is not Birrunga’s country – “I have no cultural authority here,” he says – but it has been the artist’s home for the last 30 years. In 2019, Indigenous art space Birrunga Gallery opened on the lower level of a commercial building on Adelaide Street, in the heart of the CBD. Through a mentoring program, he brought young First Nations artists into the city, giving them esteem where they had historically been pushed to the fringes.
In April, he decided to close the gallery and move operations online. The CBD, Birrunga says, , and it’s time for him to c.
