Image: D Lan Galleries, Melbourne
D Lan Galleries is presenting bark painting as both a material practice and a carrier of cultural knowledge in its current Sydney exhibition, ‘Bark Masters’. In a newly published conversation, Lauren Harvey, the gallery’s Sydney manager, discusses how works made on eucalyptus bark embody ancestral narratives, connection to Country and the physical presence of the artist’s hand.
Harvey describes bark painting as a medium in which sculpture and painting converge. The works are made on bark harvested from Eucalyptus tetrodonta, or stringybark, during the wet season. According to the gallery’s account, the bark is stripped from the tree, cured over fire and flattened under weights before being used as a painting surface. Earth pigments are produced from naturally occurring clay rich in iron oxide and mixed with a binder.
The process leaves each work with an irregular, three-dimensional surface. Rather than treating those undulations as imperfections, the exhibition foregrounds the way the material’s natural lines shape each composition. Harvey said the bark’s physical qualities allow viewers to see the immediacy of the artists’ draughtsmanship, while connecting the works directly to the natural environment from which they come.
The presentation places the bark paintings within a contemporary interior setting. Harvey argues that this arrangement makes the works’ relationship with the natural world particularly visible, while also creating dialogue between paintings, sculpture and sculptural objects. The exhibition includes works by Muŋgurrawuy Yunupiŋu, Nym Djimungurr and Mawalan Marika, among others. The gallery identifies examples in the presentation as including Muŋgurrawuy Yunupiŋu’s ‘Untitled’, circa 1959; an artist-unknown ‘Untitled’, circa 1958; Nym Djimungurr’s ‘Lightning Spirit – Namakkon’, circa 1950; and a circa-1959 ‘Untitled’ by Mawalan Marika.
Three figurative sculptures are also included in the exhibition. D Lan Galleries says they have provenance from the Estate of Tony Tuckson and Margaret Tuckson, and describes them as being in exceptional condition. The works are associated with collecting trips undertaken in the late 1950s by Dorothy Bennett, who accompanied Tony Tuckson and Stuart Scougall on behalf of the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Display and care are also part of the gallery’s discussion. For ‘Bark Masters’, D Lan Galleries has placed the barks in shallow black open box frames, which the gallery says provide an uninterrupted viewing space around each work and emphasise the lines of the natural material. The frames are also intended to make the works easier to hang and transport. Harvey describes bark as delicate in appearance but sturdy and durable, while positioning the medium as an accessible entry point for collectors beginning to build collections of Australian First Nations art.
The conversation, titled ‘The Compelling Nature of Bark Paintings’, was published by D Lan Galleries on 23 July 2026. ‘Bark Masters’ is currently on view at D Lan Galleries Sydney, at 97–99 Queen Street, Woollahra.
