Image: Crista Bradshaw, Between the Archives: an Indigenous Perspective, installation view City of Adelaide ART POD, photo Lana Adams
The Guildhouse Collections Project
Crista Bradshaw
Between the Archives: an Indigenous Perspective
Presented in partnership with the City of Adelaide
17 November 2025 — 15 February 2026
Created through The Guildhouse Collections Project in partnership with the City of Adelaide and presented with Tarnanthi Festival, Between the Archives emerges from Wangkumara artist Crista Bradshaw’s engagement with the City of Adelaide Archives.
Responding to the historical maps, records and administrative documents that attempted to define — and, in doing so, overwrite — Tarntanya on Kaurna Yarta, the work reflects on the colonial claiming of the place now known as “Adelaide.” These records reveal how official histories were shaped through imported systems of authority that worked to diminish existing sovereign custodianship.
Through video, projection and material experimentation, Bradshaw reframes the archive from a First Nations perspective, drawing attention to what is preserved and what is omitted. The work invites audiences to consider the cultural knowledge that continues beyond colonial record-keeping, and the enduring custodianship of First Nations people over this land, past, present and future.
The Guildhouse Collections Project with the City of Adelaide is supported by CreateSA and presented with Tarnanthi Festival.
Crista Bradshaw, photo Lana Adams
Crista Bradshaw is a proud Wangkumara contemporary artist based in Adelaide, South Australia. Disconnected from her heritage growing up, her practice is rooted in a process of cultural reconnection after discovering the impact of colonisation on her family’s ties to their Mob.
Working across expanded painting, sculpture, installation, and text-based media, Bradshaw explores the convergence of First Nations and Western identities. Her research-led practice draws on the Dreaming, archival material, and site visits to Country, using an Indigenist methodology to address the silences left by colonial violence.
She recently completed a First Class Honours degree in Creative Arts at the University of South Australia, receiving a University Medal and the UniSA Creative Graduate Exhibition Prize.
She has exhibited widely across South Australia. Her work has featured in Stories (2017) at the Kerry Packer Civic Gallery, A Quarter Turn Around the Sun (2020) at the SASA Gallery, Epoch (2021) at UniSA, and Yawara muku nura (language graveyard) (2023) at the Helpmann Graduate Exhibition at ACE Gallery, where she received the SALA Award. She has also exhibited at The Mill’s, Still Self (2023), in the group show Limen (2024), and in the solo online exhibition gawa nali yanta-ra nanta nura-anani (come on, we’ll go to my camp). Most recently, she presented her solo exhibition Yuru Walbiri-ana: Only Shadow at the Burra Regional Art Gallery.
The Guildhouse Collections Project + City of Adelaide
The Guildhouse and City of Adelaide initiative provides a paid opportunity for an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander artist to research and respond to the City of Adelaide’s extensive cultural collections, creating new work for presentation during the 2025 Tarnanthi Festival, exhibited in the City of Adelaide’s ART POD on Pirie Street.. The City of Adelaide manages several significant cultural collections including the City Archives, civic collection, public art, commemorative monuments, memorials, and a growing collection of contemporary artworks. These collections reflect the city’s cultural identity and values, past and present.
