Arts / Earth

RIVERINE Where Art Meets Landcare

The etched line has a built-in history and future, a grip on paper and a reference to every other hand that picked up a tool to draw. This work is about relationships and connections, finding meanings forwards and backwards, and across continents.

Ian Westacott
A close up photograph of a waterhole with reflections of the surrounding eucalypt trees and creamy coloured, patterned pond scum on the surface of the water. Image: Raymond Arnold.

About the project

Bonnie Brae is a 1,000-hectare family farm in Victoria’s Wimmera region, owned by Don, Prue, and Dougal McAllister. Purchased in the 1980s as a degraded property, the farm under their stewardship has transitioned from industrial practices into a mixed cropping and livestock regenerative agriculture enterprise focused on biodiversity.

Over the last four years long-time friends Raymond Arnold, Ian Westacott and John Wolseley have camped each autumn in a curl of the Banyena / Richardson River at Bonnie Brae. They have been making paintings and etchings of the ephemeral river systems and the trees that border them. Fellow artists Helena Demczuk and Jonathon Westacott were also occasional visitors to the artist camp. As they worked the artists considered the morphology, the form and structure of the landscape and reflected on how it has been shaped and used, firstly with great care over thousands of years by the Dja Dja Wurrung and Wotcheballok and then radically and sometimes violently altered with the coming of European settlers. They began to feel that they might be able to throw some light on ideas of earth guardianship and ecological care through their artworks.

Sunset image with yellow dappled light of a fenced farm paddock with scattered eucalypt trees under a blue sky with fluffy white and grey clouds.

Publication

OUTSIDE THE BOX / Earth Arts Rights and Warner Design have partnered with the artists to deliver the RIVERINE publication project. This project aims to raise awareness of the beauty and importance of remnant river red gum country in the Wimmera. This 68 page, short-run bespoke, publication features over 50 images of paintings, watercolours and etchings created over the last four years both en plein air and later in geographically distant studios in Queenstown, Tasmania, Whipstick forest, Victoria and Dornoch, Scotland. It also includes beautiful landscape photography by Jonathon Westacott and a series of insightful essays by Bonnie Brae steward Prue McAllister and artists Raymond Arnold, Ian Westacott and John Wolseley.

As Prue writes in her opening essay in the book: ‘Facts and figures tell us that our natural landscapes are in decline. Population pressures, farming practices and a changing climate continue to reshape them. But caring for a landscape isn’t driven by science alone. Art reaches us differently. The works in Riverine are not simply pictures of the Richardson River. They hold time, observation and feeling. The work reminds us why these old trees, winding rivers and scattered patches of bush are worth protecting in the first place. That is where art and Landcare meet. One inspires us to care, the other gives us the means to turn that care into action.’

Stylised image of a giant river red gum with a thick black trunk and colourful twisted branches.
Raymond Arnold – Wimmera dialectic 2025 (detail)
A black line drawing with blue watercolour wash of giant river red gum with twisted broken limbs, one of which resembles the head and horn of a rhinoceros.
Ian Westacott – Eucalyptus rhinoceros 2026
A colourful, abstract watercolour painting of a waterhole with large river red gum trees growing along the banks and their reflections on the water surface.
John Wolseley – Entangled layers of the spectral rivers of the Wimmera Plains – Kurakibiyal to Banyena via Grays Bridge 2023 (detail)

Exhibition

This book is published to coincide with the exhibition Riverine – Three old etchers and the ancient trees of the Wimmera at Australian Galleries, Melbourne, – and Raillery Art Gallery, St Arnaud, – .

A black and white portrait of a man wearing a peaked cap, glasses and artist’s apron. He is lifting an etching off a copper plate.
A black and white portrait of a man with grey hair in an artist studio. He is using a small roller to ink up a copper etching plate.
A black and white photograph of a man in a forest landscape. He is wearing a peaked cap and taking a photograph of a tree trunk.

Pre-Order RIVERINE

Pre-orders for RIVERINE are now open with delivery scheduled for mid September 2026. All proceeds from the sale of RIVERINE will be used to support the art practices of Raymond, Ian and John, and help develop and deliver future OUTSIDE THE BOX / Earth Arts Rights projects.

Pre-Order

An image of a book cover with scattered lowercase black text spelling out the word ‘riverine’. It overlays a double-page spread from the book with a close up photograph of a tree branch with orange and brown bark on the left-hand side and essay text on the right-hand side.
Artist portraits from top: Raymond Arnold by Helena Demczuk, Ian Westacott and John Wolseley by Jonathon Westacott Bonnie Brae landscape by Prue McAllister