“By the River” reflects on Dharug artist Billy Bain’s works on migration of the long-finned eel – a passage from saltwater to freshwater that mirrors his own path of cultural return. The Art Gallery of New South Wales exhibition draws on Bain’s experience growing up off Country on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, where surfing shaped his early connection to place. Over time, he came to consider that he, like the eel, has journeyed from the sea to the freshwaters of the Dyarubbin/Hawkesbury River. This meeting of fresh- and saltwater is a powerful metaphor for Bain’s process of reconnecting with the stories and culture of his ancestors, the Boorooberongal people.
By the River marks Bain’s first exhibition at a state art museum and presents a bold new body of sculpture and paintings. Drawing on his keen observations of place, surf culture, coastal iconographies and Indigenous storytelling, Bain reimagines the beach and river as sovereign Indigenous spaces alive with memory, belonging and cultural resurgence.
Central to the exhibition is Bain’s commitment to intergenerational knowledge-sharing and skills development for New South Wales Aboriginal peoples. Textile elements created in collaboration with Bain’s mother, Kathleen Bain, employ a Dharug way of being where shared acts of making and exchange express how culture flows like water through the generations.
- Billy Bain, Stolen land, 2024 (detail), collection of the artist © Billy Bain, photo: Andrew Fawcett, courtesy of the AGNSW.