Colonial History Put on Display at Town Hall Gallery

Maree Clarke and Megan Evans will bring a new artwork honouring the Stolen Generations to Town Hall Gallery from November 4, 2026, to January 30, 2027. Their exhibition, The Uncomfortable Truth, addresses Australia's colonial history and places two artists’ perspectives in direct conversation. The subject is not a comfortable footnote: the exhibition is explicitly about a history shaped by colonial power.

Two Inherited Positions

Clarke and Evans have been close friends for more than 35 years, but the exhibition doesn’t smooth over the differences in how they approach that history. They bring what the project describes as “profoundly different inherited positions” into direct conversation. The phrase points to a divide that friendship alone doesn’t erase; the work makes those perspectives part of the exhibition rather than pretending there is only one way to approach the past.

The exhibition explores photographing family, extensive cultural research and the importance of continuing uncomfortable conversations about Australia's past. Those are the approaches named for the project. The account does not provide further detail about individual photographs or research, so the work’s specific contents remain unstated. What is clear is the choice to put family, cultural inquiry and difficult public conversation together around colonial history.

Traditions Lost or Forced Dormant

Clarke has spent a 30-year art career creating and reviving traditions that were lost or forced into dormancy. That description places cultural continuity at the centre of her practice: the work includes both making traditions and bringing them back. The exhibition connects that career to a project honouring the Stolen Generations, though the account does not specify which traditions or artworks will appear in the gallery.

The language matters. Traditions described as “forced into dormancy” weren’t simply left behind; the description names coercion as part of their history. Clarke’s work of revival sits alongside the exhibition’s attention to colonial history, while Evans brings a different inherited position into the exchange. Neither artist is presented as speaking from an identical place.

A Conversation, Not a Policy Announcement

Town Hall Gallery will present the exhibition for the dates announced: November 4, 2026, through January 30, 2027. The account describes a joint exhibition and a new artwork, not a government program or legislative proposal. It offers no electoral remedy, policy plan or institutional funding details. Nor does it describe grassroots organizing, mutual aid or a community-led campaign; its focus is Clarke and Evans’s artwork and the conversations they want to continue.

That limit is worth keeping in view. The exhibition brings colonial history into a gallery through family photography, cultural research and conversation, but the source gives no claim that an artwork resolves that history. Clarke and Evans instead approach it from distinct inherited positions and make the uncomfortable conversation part of the work. The announced project honours the Stolen Generations while leaving its particular images and research details unreported. For now, the facts are the artists, their stated approaches and the gallery dates—not a tidy ending to the history the exhibition addresses.