Acclaimed multidisciplinary artist Justene Williams has unveiled a major exhibition in Brisbane, firmly rejecting the staid conventions of the career retrospective in favour of a dynamic collision between past and present.
The exhibition, titled Once We Were Mudskippers, marks a pivotal moment for the Sydney-born practitioner whose eclectic body of work spans performance, video, sculpture, and large-scale immersive installations. ABC News NSW reported that rather than compiling an orderly survey, Williams elected to stage fresh artistic dialogues, deliberately producing new works that wrestle directly with her archive.
Defying the conventional retrospective
Retrospectives have long served as institutional capstones, often flattening an artist’s developmental volatility into a neat, chronological arc. Williams has systematically disrupted that expectation. At the Brisbane showcase, older pieces do not merely sit as static milestones; they are re-contextualised, reassembled, and intimately integrated alongside works completed only months ago.
Arts commentators note that this resistance to finality is characteristic of Williams’s broader creative ethos. Her practice has continually favoured chaotic vitality, tactile immediacy, and open-ended play over pristine preservation, challenging gallery visitors to perceive art-making as an evolving continuum rather than a completed historical record.
From the Archibald to the Tate
Williams’s ascent across the national and international cultural landscape has been distinguished by an unusual stylistic breadth. While broadsheet audiences may recognise her from past entries in the prestigious Archibald Prize—where portraiture demands formal rigour—her institutional footprint extends considerably further.
Her works have entered the permanent collection of London’s Tate, establishing her as one of Australia’s most vital contemporary exports. That global institutional endorsement underscores the depth of her subversive practice, which often combines discarded everyday materials, dazzling kaleidoscopic sets, and rigorous conceptual underpinnings without ever succumbing to high-art pomposity.
An amphibious dialogue across decades
The thematic core of Once We Were Mudskippers draws inspiration from the amphibious creature that navigates between water and land, serving as an apt metaphor for an artist who effortlessly straddles disparate media and disciplines.
Visitors navigating the exhibition encounter an exuberant labyrinth of sound, moving image, and tactile sculptural environments. ABC News NSW reported that the multi-layered installation purposefully encourages active sensory engagement, drawing viewers into Williams’s distinctly theatrical visual lexicon.
By bridging her early exploratory performance videos with ambitious contemporary structures, Williams demonstrates that an artist’s past need not dictate their future. Instead, the exhibition stands as a testament to perpetual reinvention, reasserting her place at the cutting edge of contemporary Australian visual culture.