Aidan Hartshorn and N.Smith Gallery present On whose authority, an exhibition spanning installation, sculpture, and etchings that examines the institutional collection and storage of ancestral & cultural material.
Working with stone collected across Wolgal/Wiradjuri Country, Hartshorn vacuum sealed each piece, referencing the ethnographic methods used to package Aboriginal “artefacts” uncovered during excavation works for infrastructure projects. Alongside this installation, the exhibition included a series of etchings on aluminium dibond, plywood, steel, and sheepskin, extending Hartshorn’s examination of institutional systems and the displacement of cultural material.
Through these works, Hartshorn critiqued the ways his ancestral inheritance and other cultural material have been removed from Country, catalogued, and contained within institutional collections, challenging systems that reduce living cultures to archival objects. Instead, he asserted that the knowledge held within these removed belongings remains inseparable from Country, ongoing custodianship, and continued cultural practice.
