“In my community and for First Peoples across Australia we hold stories of spirits and other worldly beings that heed both warning and protection.
Across our lands there are accounts of Ancestral creatures that have created the rivers and mountains, that swim in the oceans and protect waters ways and there are tales of beings that entrap minds and children or lead you astray causing you mischief. There are stories of beings that bring new life of babies and protection of country that guide you in ways to safety and care.
These stories both light and dark are not myths or folklore, they are real to the people and to the land and linked to the human experience of connecting to place and ecologies we are yet to understand.
Further to these stories embedded in the spirit of country there are connections to the metaphysical and multidimensional space of time, between mind and matter with people and animal kin that are said to travel on astral plains beyond what we know on earth, that shapeshift and connect, who heal and pass on messages.
My ideas for this exhibition have come from the many years of yarns with Elders and community—the stories told around the kitchen table and campfires—and my passion to share community voice and culture, these stories relate to deep networks of knowledge. My aim for Shadow Spirit is to inspire and share with respect and integrity the many stories that relate to this theme—from the personal, the imaginative, the historical, and the cultural perspectives of the artists.”
— Kimberley Moulton
Kimberley Moulton is a Yorta Yorta woman who grew up in Shepparton country Victoria and is an accomplished Senior Curator and writer. She is an Artistic Associate at RISING and a Senior Curator, First Peoples at Museums Victoria. Kimberley works with knowledge, histories and futures at the intersection of First Peoples historical collections and contemporary art and her practice works to extend the paradigm of what exhibitions and research in and out of institutions can be for First Peoples communities in Australia and globally.
She has held Senior curatorial and community arts development roles at Museums Victoria for fifteen years and independently has curated numerous exhibitions and written extensively for art and museum publications worldwide. She has held curatorial and writing research fellowships across Europe, UK, U.S.A, South Asia and North America which have looked at both musicological collections of First Peoples belongings and contemporary art practices.
In 2019 Kimberley won the University of Sydney Power Institute National Indigenous Art Writing Award and is currently a PhD research candidate for the Wominjeka Indigenous Research Lab and Monash University Melbourne. Kimberley is currently the deputy chair of the board for Shepparton Art Museum and a director of the board for non-for-profit The Adam Briggs Foundation.