National Indigenous Art Triennial at National Gallery of Australia centres the ongoing process of ceremony in Aboriginal art

When curator Hetti Perkins talks about 'ceremony' she invokes the image of an iceberg: the public part we experience is the tip, floating above the water — but below that surface there are stories with immense depth and breadth known only to our ancestors and senior people. "It's been a real privilege for me to be part of this project and to work with the artists and the team here at the National Gallery of Australia," she says. "If we take that as a starting point, we're talking about Canberra or Kamberri as a place that people know as the political capital, where Parliament House is, and for many people it's a distant place where decisions are made that affect the daily lives of our people, and they don't feel like they have a say in that process." Yawuru artist Robert Andrew's 'writing machine' is a kinetic sculpture that responds to the cultural history of the Kamberri/Canberra region by gradually revealing a phrase gifted to him by Dr Matilda House and her son Paul Girrawah House, two Traditional Custodians of the region, whose work is also featured in Ceremony. From Nicole Foreshew and Boorljoonngali's healing mist Wir Guwang in Fiona Hall's fern garden, to Robert Fielding's Holden On mounted on a pontoon on Lake Burley Griffin, to the scarred trees of Mulanggari yur-wang by Dr Matilda House and her son Paul Girrawah House, Perkins hopes to make the walls of the gallery feel "more porous and less like a fortress".