SHELTER envisions Goolugatup as a junction between land, sky and water, a site of refuge in the heart of the city. Focusing on the Silver Gull and Welcome Swallow, two endemic bird species that thrive in the contested spaces created by human proximity, SHELTER will immerse you in a shared experience of communal life spilling through the built, natural and imagined environments that describe home. Together, Anna and Abdul-Rahman weave a narrative that both questions and affirms our role in a world shared with the life, love and death of so many. The instinct to belong is an act of survival that embeds us within the natural world as yet another organism seeking refuge in each other. If the birds are home, so are we.

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Anna Louise Richardson and Abdul-Rahman Abdullah live on a cattle property with their three small children, on Wadjuk Nyungar country in the Peel region of Western Australia. Immersed in an agricultural environment, their practices offer alternative perspectives across diverse, and often disparate communities, finding common ground in the intersections of culture, family and the natural world. Animals are fundamental to their visual languages, populating a collaborative practice spanning drawing, sculpture and installation with a beguiling familiarity that speaks to a collective, and distinctly human experience. Together, they weave a narrative that both questions and affirms our role in an environment shared with the cyclic vitality of life, death and love.

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Photo: Bo Wong