Through a continuing practice of return, Awabakal artist Shellie Smith reconnects archival traces with Country, reclaiming cultural narratives and affirming ongoing Awabakal presence within Newcastle’s urban fabric.

Presented in The Lock-Up’s Front Galleries, Willuġko layers projection, textile and text, informed by research into traces of Awabakal middens and the role of redaction in ensuring cultural safety.

The exhibition extends Smith’s investigation into redaction as a strategy of cultural care, questioning the limitations of Western archival systems and the ways Indigenous knowledge has been recorded through colonial documentation. Within An Infinite Score, Smith’s work invites reflection on histories that continue to accumulate and reveal themselves in the present.

“Through my work, revealing and redaction become a held space. Understanding remains where it belongs, shared, whilst the decision to care for it can become visible.”
— Shellie Smith