The Charles Darwin University Art Gallery presents Bitumen & Dirt – Wayne Eager: 30 Years in the Territory, a significant touring exhibition featuring 78 paintings and prints drawn from public and private collections around Australia, including 14 works from the CDU Art Collection, at the Araluen Arts Centre.

The exhibition charts the life and work of Eager since arriving in the Northern Territory from Melbourne in 1990 and confirms that while Eager’s practice has been one with an intensely Northern Territory focus, the recognition of that work extends across the nation.

The exhibition will be officially opened at 6:00pm, Friday 26 March by Rupert Myer AO, philanthropist and former Chair of the Australia Council for the Arts from 2012–2018.

An artist floortalk with Wayne Eager will be presented at 10:30am, Saturday 27 March.

Bitumen & Dirt – Wayne Eager: 30 Years in the Territory will show at the Araluen Galleries until Sunday 14 June.

Entry is free to the public.

This exhibition is proudly sponsored by Artback NT and the Australia Council for the Arts.

Quotes from Director Araluen Cultural Precinct, Felicity Green

“Congratulations to Wayne Eager for elevating what is a uniquely Territory–focused body of work to the national stages.

“His exhibition “Bitumen and Dirt” is clearly an important event to showcase the sheer beauty and colour of the Territory.

Quote from CDU Art Gallery curator, Dr Joanna Barrkman

“Eager creates unique and densely layered paintings of shapes, lines and dashes that evoke the lacework of dirt tracks and bitumen roads linking remote Aboriginal communities and outstations with the steadfast “line” of the Stuart Highway - uniting the Territory from north to south”

Quote from exhibition curator, Kellie Joswig

“Together, the works can be read as a ‘map’ marking the far reaches of the Territory and its various topographies and juxtapositions of green, wet, humid tropics and red, dry, arid desert.”

Media contact: Territory Families, Housing and Communities 0427 915 108