Exhibition Opening: To the Owner

To the Owner is Alana Hunt's first institutional solo exhibition in Gadigal Nura/Sydney. Featuring new and recent works presented across film, photography, print and text, the exhibition is a defiant exposition of the cultural and social implications of property ownership, housing insecurity, and the ongoing impact of colonialism in contemporary Australia. Delivered amid a national housing crisis, the exhibition extends Hunt's decade-long practice positioning settler-colonial violence and complicity not as a past event, but an ongoing force.

To the Owner marks a new phase in Hunt's practice, reflecting her move to Gadigal Country after more than a decade living on Gija and Miriwoong Countries in the East Kimberley region of Western Australia. The exhibition builds on ongoing interventions, new and recent analogue films, and research-based works first presented at PICA (Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts) as part of the Copyright Agency Partnerships (CAP) Commission series, Borloo/Perth, in late 2025, to consider the conditions of non-Indigenous life in Australia, and what it means to live on Aboriginal Land.

You are invited to celebrate the opening of To the Owner on Thursday 10 September, 6–7.30pm, with a Welcome to Country by Aunty Rhonda Dixon Grovenor.

Alana Hunt is a non-Indigenous artist and writer, formerly based on Gija and Miriwoong Countries in the East Kimberley region of Western Australia, now living in Gadigal Nura/Sydney. Working across video, photography, printed matter, installation, and publishing, her research-driven and socially engaged practice examines how colonisation continues to shape relationships to land, home and complicity.
 
Recent exhibitions include Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale: In Interludes and Transitions (2026), Saudi Arabia; A Deceptively Simple Need (2025), Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Borloo/Perth; Singapore Biennale: pure intention (2025), Singapore Art Museum; Surveilling a Crime Scene (and other examinations) (2025), Griffith University Art Museum, Magandjin/Brisbane; like bloodthirsty mosquitoes: Jack Green and Alana Hunt (2024), Watch This Space, Mparntwe/Alice Springs, and The Cross Art Projects, Gadigal Nura/Sydney; Dreams Nursed in Darkness (2024), Wollongong Art Gallery; Surveilling a Crime Scene (2023), Northern Centre for Contemporary Art, Garramilla/Darwin; Rural Utopias (2023–24), Art Gallery of Western Australia, Borloo/Perth; Photo Kathmandu (2023), Patan House, Nepal; Kaghazi Pairahan: Publishing & Resistance, Printed Matter, New York (2024), Arthshila Santiniketan and Ahmedabad, India (2024), and Double Dummy, France (2023); Growing Like a Tree: Sent a Letter (2022–23), Sunaparanta Goa Centre for the Arts, India; The National: New Australian Art (2021), Carriageworks, Gadigal Nura/Sydney, among others.
 
Hunt's films have screened at Visions du Reel, Antenna Documentary Film Festival, Revelation Perth International Film Festival and Sharjah Film Platform 7—where in 2024 she won Best Short Documentary for the film Surveilling a Crime Scene (2023)—among other public and non-traditional screenings.   
 
Hunt has published a number of critically acclaimed books, including the iterative memorial Cups of nun chai (2010–20), which was serialised in 86 editions of Kashmir Reader (2016–17) and published by Yaarbal Books in 2020. Her writing has been published by Hyperallergic, Artlink, Westerly, Meanjin, Overland, and un Magazine.
 
Alana Hunt is currently a resident at the Clothing Store Artist Studios at Carriageworks. She was the recipient of the 2024 PICA x Copyright Agency Partnerships (CAP) Commission.