Rising: Shadow Spirit: Rising Festival | Flinders Street Station, Melbourne

A new First Peoples exhibition in Flinders Street Station’s abandoned rooms. Be immersed in Ancestral systems of knowledge. Traverse time and celestial worlds. Reflect on the shadows of Australia’s history.

Ascend to Flinders Street Station’s top floor for an exhibition that shares spirit worlds, heeding warning and bringing protection. Enter a new dimension where time undulates between the past and present, and where spirits and creatures of country ask us to listen deeply. Thirty of the most exciting First Peoples artists and collectives from across Australia, invite you into these realms. 

 

A cavernous gymnasium hosts water spirits, existing on country and on Ancestral plains. Abstracted desert worlds speak to old wisdom still in practice. The ballroom weaves plant and animal ecologies with the spirit of senior artists that share song and ceremony, immersing you in country. Works illuminate protective guardians, that warn and cause mischief. Some sing. Some whisper. Some rock and roll. 

 

There are layers to the shadows of history; to the spirit of these memories. They’re not myths or legends. They’re real to the people and the land. These expressions exist within systems of deep knowledge that connect to space between what the body feels, and the mind knows. 

 

Come upstairs. Worlds await.

 

Artwork:

Dylan Mooney

Weaving Time, 2023

digital illustration