The Trial
The Hub Gallery
Caboolture Regional Gallery
31 January – 26 February 2026
Exhibition Statement:
Grounded in a layered definition of ‘trial’ – legal, personal endurance, and societal judgement - Kylie Harries re-examines the Azaria Chamberlain case, which unfolded throughout the 1980s. Framed through her own lived experience growing up in Mount Isa during that time, she retraces the treatment of Azaria’s mother Lindy, blamed for the baby’s disappearance at Uluru (then known as Ayers Rock). Extending beyond biography into an archival and cultural study, Kylie Harries forensically investigates the effects of the experience on herself and the Australian psyche.
The Trial reveals autobiographical childhood memories and womanhood reflections but extends to contemporary conversations on media scrutiny of women, systemic injustice and the persistence of gendered persecution. Using firsthand experience and witness reports of the time, Kylie Harries confronts and documents history to understand its effects, and rediscover hidden, erased and forgotten stories. Responding to contemporary feminist issues of the vilification of women through online trolling and femicide, The Trial questions whether we have at all moved on from the statements made 1000 years ago by St. Bernard of Clairvaux - “Eve is the original cause of all evil, whose disgrace has come down to all other women”.
The Trial evokes photographic archives with punk aesthetics, featuring deconstructed mining work shirts, stained fabrics, reflective tape, copper pipes, and sound effects. Materiality of medium and subject collide, and a limited colour palette connects the elements evoking aerial views of mining operations, tailings dams and the rock formations and deserts of central Australia.
Acknowledgement:
Development of this body of work took place through my participation in The Path with Kellie O’Dempsey, and was supported by Sunshine Coast Creative Alliance, City of Moreton Bay RADF and Arts Queensland. The Regional Arts Development Fund is a partnership between the Queensland Government and City of Moreton Bay to support local arts and culture in regional Queensland.
Photo acknowledgment: Photos by Katie Bennett @embellysh
