through song and mud
the river calls me
calls us
we strip off our clothes
and jump in[1]
Reflect pays tribute to Karrawirra Pari/River Torrens—the ‘Red Gum Forest River’ of the Tarntanya/Adelaide plains. Flowing near the present-day city centre and a short distance from the Flinders University City Campus at Festival Plaza, Karrawirra Pari is a vital living cultural site for the Kaurna people.
Presented as a three-channel video, the work layers imagery of the river with a soundscape of poetry by Kaurna contributors, creating a digital deep-listening experience of place. Guided by the knowledge and wisdom shared by Kaurna Elder, Dr. Uncle Lewis Yarlupurka O’Brien, and his son, Senior Kaurna man Mickey Kumatpi O’Brien, Reflect captures the shimmering light and shade of Karrawirra Pari’s long story.
Unbound Collective thanks Kaurna poets Dominic Guerrera, Taylor Power, Dearna Newchurch, and Carly Tarkari Dodd for their powerful contributions to the work.
The four First Nations women of Unbound Collective are both artists and academics who began their collaborative practice at Flinders University in 2014. Their research-based, critical, and creative work explores complex questions of what it means to be sovereign peoples—Yidinyji/ Mbarbram, Yankunytjatjara, Narungga, Mirning—and their existence within and outside the institutional framework of a colonial settler state that continually seeks to categorise and contain them.
Reflect was originally commissioned in 2022 by the Museum of Discovery (MOD) for their exhibition Invisibility.
Unbound Collective: Ali Gumillya Baker (1975), Mirning, Faye Rosas Blanch (1959), Yidinyji/Mbararam, Natalie Harkin (1970), Narungga, and Simone Ulalka Tur (1971) Yankunytjatjara.
[1] Dominic Guerrera, “Love of River,” poem for Reflect – the light and shade of a long story, 2022
