Curated by Claire Taylor and Elizabeth Day, Dreams Nursed in Darkness brings together art by people who know incarceration firsthand, alongside artworks that respond to Australia’s prison and detention systems, past and present.
The exhibition takes a close look at Australia’s relationship with prisons from the inside out. It uses art as a powerful form of truth-telling to face violence that began in the past and still affects us today. The exhibition shows how modern prisons and immigration detention directly continue colonial practices used to control, displace and contain First Nations people. This ongoing history helps explain why First Nations people are over-represented in Australian prisons and face a much higher risk of harm.
The exhibition also includes artworks that look at the use of isolation and borders in immigration detention to hide violence, keep people out of sight, and strip them of their rights.
The works in this exhibition challenge us to think about the failures of our prison systems and unfairness built into our laws, rules, organisations and social systems. They also ask us to consider our own role in long-standing issues. Together, the artworks explore a topic that remains deeply debatedโone where many important social questions still don’t have clear answers.