Through her multi-disciplinary practice, Sarah Walker explores contemporary responses to death, disaster, and catastrophe. Text, language, and dark humour form the basis of works in which she creates speculative fictions that employ the element of surprise to prompt conversations about difficult subjects.

In this artist interview, Walker discusses how she has responded to the Gallery’s most iconic work, Frederick McCubbin’s A bush burial (1890) in our latest wall commission. This imagined dialogue between the artist and his wife, Annie, explores the intimacy of the newly married couple, their collaboration on the composition and foreshadows the tragedy that awaits the pair: the accidental death of their infant daughter Mary.

Sarah Walker—Her small white hands (Wall commission #2)

Friday 11 June to Sunday 17 October 2021

Supported through Creative Victoria’s Covid-19 Strategic Investment Fund

^{Video produced by Levi Ingram}