Found

Bathurst Regional Art Gallery (BRAG) presents Found by Heather Dunn in the Foyer Gallery.

Found is less about the act of physically collecting objects and more about observation and presence within a landscape.

A road trip in 2025 across the Nullarbor and through the outback of South Australia, during one of the region’s most severe droughts in recent history, formed the basis for the imagery that inspired this body of work. Australia’s vastness is central to the experience: immense skies, cathedral-like quiet punctuated by birdsong, stark light and the beauty of the gloaming.

The fragments of wire used in this exhibition were largely gathered from areas of abandoned settler infrastructure. Colonial expansion into the marginal rangelands and semi-arid regions of South Australia produced cycles of boom-and-bust exploitation of the land, leaving visible traces across the landscape.

Ruined towns, farm complexes and transport infrastructure remain scattered across the Flinders Ranges, often well beyond the 300 mm rainfall line. Many of these developments emerged from speculative attempts to profit from the occasional favourable season, resulting in the occupation and transformation of unceded land. Even Wilpena Pound was not immune to this extractive approach, having been cropped for wheat for several seasons during the nineteenth century.

Within this context, the small fragments and found materials in Found evoke vast and empty vistas, reflecting on the indifference of the natural world to human ambition and the marks left by settlement.