Burringurrah Dreaming is an exhibition of 17 acrylic paintings on canvas by Sonya Edney. The series depicts the country of the Upper Gascoyne region, 900 kilometres north of Perth. A Yinggarda artist from Western Australia (WA), Sonya was born in the town of Carnarvon. In 2024, she was featured in a documentary series aired on SBS, Our Stories: Connecting to Country.

In a unique style that borrows elements from desert pointillism, Sonya interprets these familiar landscapes, using striking purple and green colours and lines to create imagery of waterholes, wildflowers and seasonal rain. The artist describes seasonal changes in her country and the inspiration for her paintings, “When the warnah buna, the thunderstorm, comes, it fills up all the rivers and creeks, flooding the dry land and then the wildflowers start blooming across the country like a beautiful colourful carpet. The bush food starts growing all over the Gascoyne and Upper Gascoyne regions”.

Burringurrah – Mt Augustus, is a feature work in this exhibition. The site is named after Burringurrah – a young man who ran away from the sacred mountain and Aboriginal lore, dragging his fighting stick or wana as he fled and carving the rivers, creeks and waterways in its path. Sonya has painted several important sites following this creation story, including Goolingurru Freshwater Spring where Burringurrah eventually died. Other works draw from personal experience; Freshwater Creek recalls a place where Sonya used to fish and swim with her family when she lived out bush while Gascoyne River Wildflowers depicts the proliferation of wildflowers, observed by the artist, following spring rains.

FireWorks Gallery Director, Michael Eather, comments that, “Sonya is clearly an artist on the move. We are delighted to host Sonya Edney’s first solo exhibition in Queensland. It’s not often that we get to appreciate new Aboriginal art from remote regions of WA.”