Most visitors to Lismore’s Quad after dark are looking for dinner or a way home. From October 31, they may also find a thylacine.
JAJA
The extinct marsupial will flicker into view each evening in THYLACINE TRACE, a new projection by Wiradjuri artist JAJA exploring extinction, colonisation and what we choose to create in their wake.
The work, which will come to life on October 321, follows stories of extinction and the traces left by an animal once native to mainland Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea.
But this is more than an exercise in imagining what a passing thylacine might look like beneath Lismore’s night sky.
The projection forms part of a broader body of work, THE KNU, developed through JAJA’s Regional Arts Australia Fellowship.
It asks what might come after the structures of colonisation begin to fall away, making room for creation alongside grief, violence and dispossession.
As the gallery’s description puts it: ‘Instead, it insists on balance. Alongside trauma there must also be making, imagining and building.’
JAJA’s practice centres on public art, identity and the influence of their maternal ancestors. They pay homage to their grandmothers, Catherine Ingram and Martha Hamlin, and the women who came before them.
The artist’s interest in extinction also reaches beyond the thylacine, prompting audiences to consider threats to humanity’s own future.
Visitors will have plenty of opportunities to encounter the work, which runs until April 30, 2027.
The projection begins after dusk each night in the Quad, beside Lismore Regional Gallery on Rural Street. Its evening schedule offers a different way to experience art beyond the gallery’s opening hours.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
