Shimmer moves through the contemporary experience of being a First Nations person as a kind of light you can feel, not only see. The exhibition takes its title from a public Arrernte women’s ceremony shared by very senior knowledge-holder MK Turner OAM. The lyrics, 'altyerre ayenge alhelharrke-parrkaye,' translate to, 'I am a woman and I am shimmering.'
Here, shimmering is not decoration, or surface. It is a joyful assertion of Altyere (Dreaming) and matriarchy, spoken aloud as presence, power, and belonging. It names a spiritual charge that lives in the body and in Country, an inherent energy that refuses erasure, and keeps returning, luminous.
Perkins carries that force into paint, where memory does not sit still, but glints, gathers, and drifts. Like heat haze, like water catching sun, shimmer becomes a contiguity that is ever-present, threading past into present without seam. It infuses what is remembered and what is made, so that the canvas holds not only an image, but a living current, vibrating at the edge of vision.
