Juanita McLauchlan

3. Juanita McLauchlan, maniila-y/Find, woodcuts on BFK paper, gold leaf, 76 x 56 cm. $2500

In her work, Juanita McLauchlan posits cultural knowledge and memory as something that can often be hidden and revealed. Exploring absence and presence, the intuitive gestural marks overlaying textures inspired by Country elicit something familiar, perhaps tree bark or the surface of water, yet the aesthetic ambiguity prevents it from being completely obtainable. The entangled form is symbolic of familial interconnections, bloodlines and kin. With no beginning or end, it suggests that these connections are perennial.

Australian artist Juanita McLauchlan draws upon her Gamilaraay identity, history and language to explore family connections, personal belongings and body adornments. Trained as printmaker, she enjoys making enormous contact prints on blankets, which create an impression of Wiradjuri Country, Wagga Wagga NSW, where she currently lives and works. McLauchlan often stitches these blankets or cuts them into strips to make necklaces, which are combined with possum-fur and bound with red thread to symbolise connections of bloodlines across generations. Like wool, cotton thread is an introduced European material, however she does not deny this inheritance and instead celebrates both sides of her family history. Working with her hands is integral to her embodied practice, which involves deeply personal conceptual and material explorations. 

 McLauchlan was recently awarded the Griffith Regional Art Gallery’s National Contemporary Jewellery Award 2024 and was the recipient of the McCahon House Bundanon Exchange which commences in April 2025. In recent years she has been a finalist in notable prizes, including the Wynne Prize at the Art Gallery of NSW, 2024; Ravenswood Women’s Art Prize, 2024 and 2022; Fisher’s Ghost Art Prize, 2023, and is a finalist in the upcoming Blacktown City Art Prize 2025. She has upcoming solo presentations at Wangaratta Art Gallery in February 2025, and the Art Gallery of NSW in July 2025.