Developed from a series of Dr Venessa Possum’s original watercolour paintings, the large-scale artwork spans the airport’s vehicle and pedestrian bridges, and reflects Dharug traditions, cultural protocols and connections to Ngurra (Country).

Dr Possum is a Dharug/Muringong Custodian, artist and postdoctoral researcher at Macquarie University, where she leads the Dharug Ngurra unit. Her work brings together Indigenous knowledge, cultural heritage, research and contemporary art, exploring the deep relationships between people, Country and natural world.

Now, her work is reaching an international audience through a major new artwork at Western Sydney International (Nancy-Bird Walton) Airport, along a key arrival and departure route for travellers.

Venessa’s design concept, Ngaliya Muru (Relational Paths Lighting the Way), was co-created with Indigenous design agency Balarinji, to form a public artwork.

The artwork features water (Badu) as a central element, with rivers, tributaries and waterholes represented as guiding paths that connect to Burra Ngurra Muru (Sky Country Paths), symbolising safe passage and good wishes for travellers.

The work is also an expression of Venessa’s research philosophy, Murugu (towards a path), which draws on Dharug language, ancestral knowledges and relationships with Country to explore Indigenous ways of knowing.

For Venessa, creative practices provide significant public platforms for Dharug storytelling, and she describes how her contemporary Dharug intermediary practices are bringing local Indigenous knowledges into one of Australia's newest international gateways.

As Venessa explains: “This artwork is a continuum of warunggad (ancestral presences)… honouring relational pathways and the cultural responsibility to share deeply held values across Ngurra (Country).”

Read more about this project.