Town Square Vitrines

Three vitrines, located in the urban tropical oasis of Town Square, host an annual program of six artists exploring different mediums, cultures and expressions. Workshops, In Conversations and Tours are programmed for each exhibit. Keep up to date through our newsletter.

Currently on display are the works of Rachel Bywaters titled Ganalay, The Bread of Life.

Ganalay is a native grass whose seeds were traditionally ground into flour and baked into bush bread, forming an integral part of Gamilaroi foodways and cultural identity. Situated within a replicated stained-glass form, Ganalay is reconfigured as a sacred site of knowledge transmission and holding. This gesture disrupts dominant visual languages of reverence, reasserting Indigenous ways of being and doing.

Elevated as a central, luminous presence, Ganalay emerges as a living archive—a carrier of ancestral knowledge, ecological continuity, and sustenance. In doing so, the work positions Ganalay as relational kin within place-based Gamilaroi lifeways.

The work is available for purchase at Aboriginal Art Co – https://aboriginalart.co/collections/works-on-paper/products/ganalay-the-bread-of-life

Rachel Bywaters is a multidisciplinary artist with cultural connections to Gamilaroi Country, living on Kabi Kabi Country.

Working across printmaking, papermaking, jewellery, sculpture and installation, her practice engages themes of resistance, resilience and cultural reclamation.

A recent graduate of the Bachelor of Contemporary Australian Indigenous Art at Griffith University’s Queensland College of Art and Design, she was awarded the CAIA Art Award for outstanding commitment to her studies.

_{Photography: Joe Ruckli}