THE LODGE

Amala Groom

Curated by Sharni Jones

3 May - 12 July 2025
Exhibition Opening: Friday 2 May 2025, 6pm
Artist Talk: Saturday 12 July, 3pm

The Lodge is the third moving image work in Amala Groom’s Raised by Wolves series, following The Proposal (2022), and The Union (2019). Autobiographical in nature, the series explores the relationship between alchemy (spirit) and science (matter), following the belief that life is a marriage of these forces, with the human being as the ultimate construct between them.

Filmed on Ngunnawal Country in Canberra’s Parliamentary Triangle, The Lodge engages with Groom’s history of direct action at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy and ceremonial rites of passage within and without the halls of Parliament House spanning the past 20 years from activist to advocate to artist. Named after the residence of the Prime Minister, the work references David Lynch’s Twin Peaks and its White and Black Lodges, reinterpreting them as the indivisible duality of ‘light’ and ‘dark’—a dynamic embodied by Canberra’s historical and political landscape.

Wearing  a wedding dress, Groom symbolically weaves and unravels a red rope along Anzac Parade, embodying both colonial constraint and ancestral connection. The work culminates in her transformation—empowered by the fire at the Tent Embassy, running through Parliament House she ultimately vanishes into the bush as a sovereign Wiradyuri woman.

Catalogue essay: Jack Wilke-Jans
Cultural Consultant: Ngunnawal Elder Wally Bell

This project has been supported by the ACT Government Arts Activities Funding and assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body. Groom is currently an Australian National University Visiting and Honorary Associate, Bandalang Studio Residency, College of Systems and Society.