POETRY AND ART WORKSHOP

Ekphrasis: Writing About Art Workshop facilitated by Gabrielle Journey Jones, author of four poetry collections with Ginninderra Press. Join us for two engaging hours using a range of poetic techniques to write poetry about the current art exhibition, The Fragility of Goodness: The Prison on the Landscape and Other Stories by Elizabeth Day at Bathurst Regional Art Gallery.

 We will be using a range of fun poetic techniques to write about the art exhibited in local galleries. The workshop includes:
• Fantastic ekphrastic writing exercises
• Take home resources on poetry
• Plenty of time to explore each exhibition and write quietly
• Opportunity to share writing with the group
• Creative community connections!

All welcome. No experience necessary.

Gabrielle Journey Jones is an award-winning performance poet born on sovereign Gadigal Land, Sydney, Australia. She is from Māori and African American bloodlines and has lived in Bega Valley on Yuin Country since 2018. Gabrielle has shared her poetry at local, national and international events for 30 years. Gabrielle is inspired by creative communities which celebrate diversity, activism and inclusion. Gabrielle has four poetry collections published by Ginninderra Press – Spoken Medicine (2017); Etymology of Courage (2021); The Purpose of Truth (2023) and Arrangements (2025). Gabrielle has also co-edited and produced the first edition of ‘Material & Ephemeral’ 2024 poetry anthology for the Far South Coast Ekphrasis Writing About Art Group with Caren Florance, Ampersand Duck.

Photo by: Robert Knapman

Bathurst Regional Art Gallery (BRAG) presents The Fragility of Goodness: The Prison on the Landscape and Other Stories by Elizabeth Day.

16 May – 16 August 2026

Elizabeth Day’s survey exhibition at Bathurst Regional Art Gallery examines the legacy of Empire and the colonisation of Australia and its First Nations peoples. Titled The Fragility of Goodness: The Prison on the Landscape and Other Stories, the exhibition considers how the histories of colonial institutions continue to shape contemporary Australia. Drawing on connections between historical sites, including asylums and penal settlements in Parramatta and Tasmania, Day engages with ideas of layered colonial, geographical and social histories. Her practice is informed by both historical research and personal experience within institutional systems.

A key work in the exhibition, The Law Is Not Always Just, forms part of a new series of grass-grown texts mapping prisons across the Central West. This floor installation sits among several significant works and connects closely to Bathurst’s history as part of a network of colonial prison towns established west of the Blue Mountains. Day has explored these themes in earlier works: in 2023, she presented There’s a Reason Beyond a Reason, 1797 Parramatta Gaol at The National 4 at Carriageworks, Redfern. This large-scale textile installation was made from unravelled second-hand garments and referenced early colonial prison architecture. Through the slow process of unravelling fabric, the work suggested the possibility of undoing the prison’s imprint on the landscape.

Together with Invisible Words Invisible Worlds, Notes From the Castle, the sculptural recreation of Bathurst Gaol’s Lion Gate, and the collaborative community project MYCO LOGIC, this exhibition invites reflection on systems of justice, power and repair.

Image: Elizabeth Day, The Flow of Form: There’s a Reason Beyond a Reason. Beyond That There’s a Reason (1797 Parramatta Gaol), 2023, unravelled op-shop garments, muslin, 2600 x 650 x 5 cm irregular. Installation view at Carriageworks in The National 4: Australian Art Now. Photograph: Zan Wimberley.

Bathurst Regional Art Gallery is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW