In an abandoned, dusky ballroom where couples once danced three storeys above Naarm/Melbourne’s Flinders Street railway station, hundreds of agile meat ants appear to have taken up residence in a three-metre-high mound.
Part of an elaborate animation of blossoming flowers and swaying branches by the Yolŋu collective Mulka Project, these digitally drawn ants pour out of the fibreglass mound and across the floorboards in search of spirits. The cry of the late Yolŋu artist Mulkun Wirrpanda bounces across the peeling walls and exposed wooden ceilings: “Rarrirarri, Rarrirarri.” The artist, who died in 2021, was famed for her knowledge of edible plants as well as her bark painting, weaving, carving and printmaking; here, her recorded voice calls out to the spirits as her animated footprints walk the room.
