d harding: Transfer paintings

Remai Modern is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in North America by d harding, an artist who is a descendant of Bidjara, Ghungalu and Garingbal peoples of Central Queensland Australia. Transfer paintings will feature new and existing works with particular focus on what the artist has learned by spending time on northern lands and with Indigenous peoples in Canada, Sweden and Norway. The exhibition focuses on the legibility, history and purpose of key cultural colours in their home context, while attending to what they have learned by listening and looking closely to other culture’s relations and uses for a similar palette.

Seemingly abstract and monochrome pigment works on paper and textiles—gridded by folding and unfolding, containing and releasing—belie the performances, journeys, stories, knowledge and power they contain. Attention to materials, scale, titles, and one’s own senses will open spaces of imagination and meditation for visitors who look closely.  

The exhibition includes works titled Gamubullaru, which means two waters in Ghungalu. In these works, carefully-woven French bath towels carry two naturally occurring paint pigments: kaolin (white) and iron oxide (red). These pigments are tied to the land and culture around Woorabinda, where harding has ancestral connections and current relationships. The paint colours and their original meanings are ancient, and those past meanings are not currently fully known. This body of works acts as an opening to future meanings of white and red in Murri material culture. 

The works in the Gamubullaru series (2025) are accompanied by a vitrine featuring the work Potentially enough body paint for the one-dulla-song (2026), a folded sheet of paper containing enough white pigment for a Murri dancer to paint themselves to dance for one-dulla song. The old song is one of very few that have been able to be passed down to the artist. It is a link to the past and an opening to future song and dance in their community.

harding’s ongoing series As I Remember It (2022–present) features yellow pigment purchased during a residency in Stockholm, Sweden. The colour echoes the bright natural ochre of their home territory in Australia, but this commercially available European pigment became a culturally safe, non-extractive material to use in referring to traditional culture and sacred lands without taking anything away. It also allows harding to explore pigment made in northern cultures using yellow lichen without disrupting the environment or breaking with local protocols. This pigment has been used and reused in many projects and exhibitions, including those in Norway, Sweden, London and Meanjin/Brisbane. The recent use of synthetic materials, and trust in their power, comes partly from harding’s experiences with regalia on Treaty 6 Territory in western Canada, where they witnessed the impact of contemporary approaches to colour and signification at the Red Pheasant Cree Nation powwow at Three Eagle Hills in 2025.

In harding’s series One pink breath (2026) the artist draws on the techniques, materials, and iconography present in Carnarvon Gorge—a significant cultural site for the Indigenous peoples of Central Queensland—to which harding has strong matrilineal connections. Carnarvon Gorge is globally recognised for its rock art, where painted stencils in mouth-blown ochre on sandstone index bodies, weapons and tools, domestic life, and ceremonial objects. Here, each paper artwork holds the trace of one long deep exhale—a calming and settling act of self-care. These works are hung in conversation with Three pink beats (2026), works on paper where red and white pigment are mixed into a gentle pink. Radiating and flecked circles of pure pigment have been blown using three short breaths, recalling the beat of ancestral songs. Both series are accompanied by a vitrine containing personal items, gifts received, collected and carried while visiting as a guest on homelands of Sámi, Cree, Dakota, Lakota, Saulteaux, Dene, Métis and many other Indigenous peoples from the Northern Hemisphere.

Transfer paintings is on view at Remai Modern until April 18, 2027.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body. 

Curatorial team
d harding: Transfer paintings is curated by Aileen Burns and Johan Lundh, Co-Executive Director and CEO of Remai Modern.