bawu marking

iron bark dye and red ochre

This work was commissioned for Bureaucracy of Feelings (23rd August - 12 October 2025) curated by Diego Ramíez at Gertrude Contemporary. This long-term site intervention uses ironbark sap and red ochre applied directly onto the gallery’s roof tiles and walls. By removing and marking the tiles, the work exposes the architecture itself as both surface and subject. After the exhibition, the painted tiles will be reversed and reinstalled into the gallery ceiling, embedding the gesture into the building’s structure.

‘For Bonini, this is the second long-term intervention she has made into the internal infrastructure of Gertrude Contemporary—the first being yenmatj (to burn), in 2024. In this instance, Bonini burnt South-East Indigenous mark making into the exposed wooden beams of the gallery walls—a gesture that she describes on her website as both an institutional critique and “acknowledgement of the woka (Country), upon which Gertrude Contemporary exists.” The endurance of both of these works beyond the prescribed durations of their exhibitions could be read, in part, as a refusal to conform to the usual protocols of the white cube. In the context of Bureaucracy of Feelings, bawu marking appropriates the suitably office-like ceiling panels and refuses to leave—ensuring an ongoing presence in the kind of space where, according to bureaucratic logic, it’s possible for an organisation’s engagement with Indigenous people to be considered quantitively, rather than qualitatively. That is, satisfied by tokenistic inclusion rather than substantial engagement.’ written by Amy May Stuart for Memo Review, 13th September 2025.

Moorina Bonini, bawu marking (detail), installation view, Bureaucracy of Feelings, Gertrude Contemporary, Naarm Melbourne, 2025, iron bark sap, red ochre, image courtesy and © the artist, photograph: Christian Capurro