Rebirth II
1991
Medium
etching and aquatint on buff paper
Measurements
60.3 × 28.8 cm irreg. (image and plate) 74.5 × 52.7 cm (sheet)
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Gift of Violet Sheno through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2017
© Treahna Hamm
Gallery location
Gallery 6
Level 2, NGV Australia
About this work
Yorta Yorta artist Dr Treahna Hamm has worked for over three decades creating layered, symbolic works grounded in her connection to Country along the Murray River. In these egg-shaped etchings, intricate linework reveals stories of change, disruption and deep interconnection with the natural world. Woven with spirit figures, totems, river paths and ancestral sites, the prints assert a living, continuous Yorta Yorta presence on land long misrepresented in Australian art history. Created on the same Country where Tom Roberts painted Shearing the rams, 1890, Hamm’s works quietly confront the nineteenth-century terra nullius myth perpetuated by artists of that era, affirming an ongoing cultural presence that is both physical and spiritual.
Artwork Details
Place/s of Execution
Yarrawonga, Victoria
Edition
ed. 8/50
Inscription
inscribed in pencil l.l.: “Rebirth II”
inscribed in pencil l.c.: 8/50
inscribed in pencil l.r.: Treahna Hamm 1991
Accession Number
2016.1097
Department
First Nations Australia