^{Cover Image: Mervyn Street, Wild Cattle by Horse 2025. Image courtesy of the artist and Mangakaja Arts Centre.}

The air was electrically charged, and dense with heat. Fans whirred amongst the colourful canvas adorning the Mangkaja Arts Centre in Fitzroy Crossing, as the atmosphere fell still and heavy with anticipation.

“There’s a storm coming,” exclaimed the man sitting across from me. His eyes wise and stern. 

Cloud bands gathered on the horizon but did not break. In the Kimberley, that kind of sky was never just weather.

It is reading Country: a warning, a memory, and for many, the presence of the Wandjina. The ancestral rain spirit whose power moves through storms, with creation and renewal.

A week later, in December 2022, ex-tropical Cyclone Ellie took a dramatic left turn into the catchment of the Martuwarra, also known as the Fitzroy River, and what resulted was one of the most destructive storms to hit the Kimberley in recorded history.

The flood that followed damaged homes, isolated communities, destroyed the Fitzroy Crossing bridge, and submerged artworks in water and mud.

But it would also, as many artists now reflect, mark a turning point in practice and expression.

The man who saw the oncoming storm was Gooniyandi artist Mervyn Street.

Locals rushed to Mangkaja Arts to save as much artwork as they could, including some of Mervyn’s artwork, etched onto cowhide.

“The gallery was full of water… a lot of paintings got damaged,” he said.

It is from this charged landscape, where creation stories and contemporary crisis sit side by side, that All That Country Holds emerged.

At the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, All That Country Holds brings these intersecting worlds into focus. Opening 18 April and running until 14 June 2026, the exhibition marks its Australian debut.

Presented by Kimberley Aboriginal Art and Culture, the exhibition features 42 works by ten established Kimberley artists: Ben Galmirri Ward, Angelina Karadada Boona, Mervyn Street, Evelyn Malgil, Jan Gunjaka Griffiths, Miriam Baadjo, Leah Umbagai, Marylou Orliyarli Divilli, Pauline Sunfly, and John Prince Siddon.

^{_{Noongar curator and artist, Zali Morgan. Image by Kate Ferguson.}}

Country, language and lived knowledge.

For Gooniyandi man Mervyn Street, painting has long been a way of holding stories and history that was never written down.

Born under a tree at Louisa Downs Station in the Kimberley, between Fitzroy Crossing and Halls Creek, he grew up on Country. Over decades, Street built an extraordinary visual archive of Aboriginal station life. His parents worked there all their lives, and their stories of labour, survival and injustice became the foundation of his practice.

His work also underpinned a landmark stolen wages class action that contributed to a $180.4 million settlement for Aboriginal workers and their families in Western Australia.

His practice spans painting, carving, illustration and authorship. He also uses his artwork extensively in teaching at Yiyili School, where he shares traditional language with students.

This experience shapes his distinctive visual language, including his painted stockman hats featured in the exhibition.

“It’s like a map… when I was riding in the bush,” he explains. “If you fall off your horse, you’ve got your map to get home.”

^{(Left) Gooniyandi man and artist Mervyn Street, (Right) Mervyn Street, Before Rodeo Time 2025. Images by Kate Ferguson.}

Wandjina, water and continuity

In the Kimberley, water is never just physical. It is ancestral, a narrative and alive. For artist Angelina Karadada Boona, the Wandjina embodies that relationship between storm, creation and protection.

“The Wandjina is a rainmaker… he creates the land, the waters, the storms and he settles the storm too,” she said.

Her works connect ancestral knowledge with lived experience of recent flooding, where spiritual and environmental systems are understood as inseparable.

“We weren’t scared… we knew we were safe. The Wandjina was protecting us,” she said. “When the flood went down, we saw him up in the sky… like a halo.”

Born in Kalumburu and deeply rooted in Wunambal Gaambera/Worrora Country, Karadada Boona continues a strong artistic lineage. Her mother, acclaimed artist Lily Karadada, and her father, Jack Karadada, a medicine man and artefact maker, form the foundation of her cultural inheritance.

Angelina works with white ochre, sourced from both saltwater and freshwater Country, which she gathers and prepares herself, mixing it with natural resin from the white gum tree. The resulting paintings are luminous pale pinks, chalky whites, and textured earthiness, which evoke the presence of the Wandjina.

As a Senior Arts Worker at Kira Kiro Artists, and graduate of the ANKA Arts Worker Foundation Training Program, she plays a vital role in sustaining and strengthening her community’s artistic future.

“I hope it brings good spirit, good rain, and makes everyone feel comfortable,” Karadada Boona said. 

^{(Left) Artist Angelina Boona Karadada, (right) Angelina Boona Karadada, Wandjina Emerging 1, 2025. Images by Kate Ferguson.}

Creativity after crisis

When the Fitzroy River rose during the cyclone event, it brought both destruction and inspiration. For Street, the impact on cultural infrastructure was immediate. “I work hard and do some more,” he said.

Art centres were cut off, works submerged, and communities isolated for days. Yet in the aftermath, Street describes a renewed urgency in practice. An impulse to keep telling stories even when Country itself has shifted.

“You can tell the story about my place… bring the knowledge with my heart to the city.”

Across the Kimberley, curators and art workers describe a shift following the floods. While destruction was significant, so too was the surge in artistic production that followed.

“We’re actually producing a lot more work,” Morgan said. “It comes with healing… discovering yourself after tragedy.”

The experience of loss sharpened focus for many artists, reinforcing the role of art as both record and response.

“It gave people the meaning of life and not to take anything for granted,” she reflected.

Country held across distance

The exhibition opened alongside REVEALED, WA’s largest showcase of emerging First Nations artists. Together, the two exhibitions present more than 200 works by over 100 artists, mapping both established practice and emerging voices across the state.

Despite the geographical distance between Perth and the Kimberley, the exhibition insists on continuity rather than separation. Country is not framed as remote, but as present and shared.

For Street, Karadada Boona and the other artists, these works are not representations of place, they are extensions of it.

“Even though the Kimberley is very far away, we’re on Country right here,” said Morgan. “It’s important to remind ourselves that we’re always on Country.”

And in that way, All That Country Holds arrives in Perth not as a distant story of floods and rain spirits, but as a living system of knowledge, still moving, still speaking, still holding Country together.

REVEALED is presented under the custodianship of the Indigenous led Aboriginal Art Centre Hub Western Australia (AACHWA), the state’s peak advocacy and resource organisation for Aboriginal art centres and the only organisation of its kind in Western Australia. Through Revealed, AACHWA continues its commitment to strengthening ethical markets, supporting artists and celebrating the richness of Aboriginal art and culture. 

All That Country Holds and REVEALED is on at PICA till the 14^th June 2026.