Nationalism, ownership, and belonging sit at the heart of the exhibition. In a moment marked by resurging populism and cultural retrenchment, EDEN’S GARDEN considers what happens when national identity is reshaped as inheritance – something possessed, defended, and nostalgically recovered. Paradise is no longer something lost; it is something claimed. The language of belonging hardens. Borders reappear. Cultural myths are revived and polished for contemporary use.

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The landscapes anchoring the works are not Australian bush scenes but hallucinated sixteenth-century Flemish tapestries – European visions of abundance transplanted onto a place that was never empty. Rather than claiming land, the exhibition leans into inherited fantasy. Australian iconography enters through culture rather than terrain: red-brick suburbia, “big things,” consumer residue, fragments of Margaret Olley still-lifes. If the land cannot be spoken for, its symbols can be rehearsed. Culture becomes surface language.