OPENING NIGHT Tuesday 28th April 6pm to 8pm
In conversation with the Artist and Dr Clare Humphries Saturday 9 May 2pm Register Here
Curated by Dr Clare Humphries
Artist & Studio Lead - Printmaking, RMIT University
For over thirty years, Deborah Williams has been sharing her close, attentive observations of the canine. The animals in her vast oeuvre of etchings, monotypes and digital images appear absorbed in their own lives: sniffing, basking in the sun, attuning to the sounds around them. Many works depict solitary dogs in open fields of space inviting us to encounter our oldest companion species clearly, and sometimes at close range.
Yet, although Deborah’s subjects are often alone on the page, many were, in fact, observed by the artist in packs: street dogs living on the margins of cities, and camp dogs deeply embedded within remote Aboriginal communities. Pack re-imagines Deborah’s body of work through the lens of these social bonds. It gathers work from years past and reconfigures what were once discrete pictures to reconstruct a social system within the gallery.
As Deborah embarks on new research into interspecies communication and kinship, Pack foregrounds the networks of relationship that bind dogs together, with one another, and with us. Alongside past work, the exhibition includes Deborah’s new work Consequence of presence (2025), a video that captures her canine kin Elkie rubbing “drawing” residues across her loungeroom wall each morning.
- Dr Clare Humphries April 2026
