Place of Being

An exhibition by Louise Daniels

Saturday 1 June – Sunday 21 July 2024, Hive Tasmania, Ulverstone Cultural Centre

Does our experience and relationship with a place impact our state of being there?

Louise Daniels explores this question in her exhibition Place of Being.

Born and raised in Ulverstone, Daniels has strong familial links to this area from both her parents. Among her ancestors is her maternal great-grandfather, GP Taylor, who recorded much of this area’s history in his considerable collection of photographs. On her father’s side are the earliest settlers in the Latrobe area, the Aboriginal Briggs/Johnson family, descended from Woretemoeteryenner and Mannalargenna of Tebrakunna of the far north-east of Loetrouwitter/Tasmania.

These strong, local family connections inform Daniels’ sense of identity, belonging, and how she experiences life in this area. Her Palawa ancestry goes back tens of thousands of years and is a profound factor. Other forebears contributed to the settlement of the North West Coast and built the places Daniels occupies now.

The physical place and its beauty is a strong influence on Daniels’ sense of being. Very much a coastal, salt-water person, Daniels pines for the coast when she is far away. Stands of coastal tea trees, Bass Strait, and the mountain ranges feature often in her landscape paintings and drawings.

This is a wide-ranging exhibition of works which explores, interprets, and re-presents stories of ancestry, the female existence, and this place.