The Interloper: Damon Bird

Damon makes images that come out of his interactions with the natural world as part of daily life where he lives in southern lutruwita. Working across painting, printmaking and works on paper, he makes use of traditional printmaking techniques, large brush and wash drawings on paper and wood, and variations of mediums across ink, oil paint, and hand ground pigment washes.

His practice lately is not to make images of things as you would normally encounter them, but of accumulated and overlapping thoughts, interactions, ideas, moments. Influenced by the surrounding environment, Damon is also preoccupied with its history. Notions of colonialism, ancestry, mythology, belonging and human impact all bleeding into his experience of the landscape and the conglomerate images that arise from it. This exhibition explores what a sense of place consists of, how it is constructed, and what kind of poetry and connection lies therein.

Image: Holding the bouquet, drypoint etching / monoprint, 2025