Exhibition Opening: Layers of Country

NAIDOC Week 2025

Evening with Artist Simone Thomson

Tuesday 8 July 2025
6.30pm - 8pm
The Track Gallery
Mount Waverley Community Centre

FREE ticketed event

Join us for a special exhibition opening event with Simone Thomson and enjoy a traditional Welcome to Country, didgeridoo performance and artist talk.

Simone is a Wurundjeri Woi-Wurrung and Yorta-Yorta woman through her mother, and Irish and Scottish through my father.

Her people are river people. Her deep connection to Country — to the sacred waterways of Birrarung and Dhungala, to the River Redgum trees and rainforests, the skies and mountains — were born before her physical self and are at the heart of her practice.

Knowledge holder, song woman and keeper of language, Wurundjeri Woi-Wurrung Elder Aunty Zeta Thomson of the Yarra-Yarra Clan will conduct Welcome to Country. Traditional Smoking Ceremony will be conducted by daughters Simone and Nicole Thomson, and Yidaki (didgeridoo) performance by son Mark Thomson.

“We are people of the earth; we are people of Country. Our heartbeat can be felt in the gentle vibrations underfoot, that consistent thudding of an ancient, timeless pulse. This is the truth of the land. It holds secrets and stories and wants to be remembered. These works reflect the dimensionality and spirit of the land, and the essence of ancestral knowledge passed down over thousands of years.”

Simone Thomson