Join Minang/Wardandi/Bibbulmun artist Christopher Pease in conversation with JCG Curator Lia McKnight about his major survey exhibition Terra Nullius, showing at John Curtin Gallery from 29 May – 23 August.
Drawing from museum archives and 19th-century colonial landscape painting, the exhibition invokes the legal fiction of terra nullius – the doctrine used by British colonisers to claim Australia as “nobody’s land,” – denying the existence of Aboriginal societies with complex laws, cultures, and custodianship of Country. For Aboriginal Australians, terra nullius sanctioned dispossession, cultural erasure, and generations of structural injustice. Pease employs the term ironically, exposing its violence and absurdity through layered painterly interventions.
This is an incredible opportunity for Curtin students to hear directly from the artist on his interrogation of visual and cultural legacies of colonisation, exploring themes of land ownership, sovereignty, social justice, identity and resilience, while emphasising the enduring connection of Noongar people to Country.
This is a free event, open to the public. Light refreshments will be provided.
Event Details
- Sunday 31 May 2026
- 2.00pm to 3:00pm
- John Curtin Gallery, Building 200A
Featured image credit: Christopher Pease, 9 O’Clock St Georges Terrace, 2000, acrylic on canvas, 100 x 225.1 cm. Curtin University Art Collection. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program by Ian Bernadt, 2004. Courtesy of the artist and Gallerysmith. Photography by Sharon Baker.
Banner image credit: Christopher Pease, Terra Nullius, 2022, oil on linen, 150 x 228 cm. Collection of Tim Ungar. Courtesy of the artist and Gallerysmith. Photography by Andrew Curtis.
