FireWorks gallery presents two solo exhibitions of Queensland artists. In the mezzanine gallery, David Paulson: Artist Portraits is a retrospective of the artist’s portraiture oeuvre, his continuing fascination with the figure and an enduring commitment to life drawing. The exhibition features seven large portraits on canvas and a series of smaller self-portrait works on paper. Based in Lockhart River, 800 kilometres north of Cairns, Kuuku Y’au artist Samantha Hobson’s new solo exhibition Wuntalpa Time in the ground floor gallery features new works painted on organic shaped plywood. These are reminiscent of islands or stones and extend Samantha’s painterly perspective.

David Paulson: Artist Portraits includes oil paintings of Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists - his friends and colleagues. David has been a finalist three times in the Archibald Prize, three times in the Brisbane Portrait Prize, and twice in The University of Queensland National Self-Portrait Prize. In Portrait of Richard Bell "Paint me angry!" the artist incorporates Bell’s own signature imagery and provocative text, “pay the rent”. In a unique collaborative painting, Michael Nelson Jagamara & Singing rain story Paulson & Jagamara contrast perceptions of identity in both Western and Aboriginal cultures demonstrating how they might successfully merge. Paulson has written, The white Western artist frames identity through the traditions of portraiture and modern technologies like digital reproduction. Through the veil of dots, I’ve sought to represent a meeting of these two distinct visual languages.

Burning in the colour, painted in 2024, is the artist’s most recent large-scale portrait. It shows Rosella Namok applying a patina to a bronze sculpture, an expression of Paulson’s admiration for the Aangkum artist and her innovative art practice.

Samantha Hobson: Wuntalpa Time explores the macro and micro ecology of ocean & creek sites around her community of Lockhart River. Wuntalpa time, characterised by brown seafoam washed up on the beach, brings distinct seasonal change to the environment which Samantha uses as a theme through these new works.

Samantha’s stories remain rooted in her heritage and culture. Works like Wuntalpa at Stony Point - oyster place speak to traditional subsistence knowledges. Timpara - Low Tide (extreme) – an energetic ocean landscape – exemplifies the artist’s liberal, spontaneous practice while Sandbeach Country depicts an aerial view of a location south of Lockhart River.

Gallery Director Michael Eather comments, “Both these exhibitions revel in the ideas of artists revisiting and remaking the important stories in their lives through their homegrown and hard-won technical expertise, highlighted with dramatic moments”.