Yaama, my name is Rachel Bywaters and I’m a Gamilaroi multidisciplinary artist living on Kabi Kabi Country. My practice spans printmaking, papermaking, jewellery, sculpture and installation, with a focus on materials, Country and cultural reclamation.
Last year I graduated with a Bachelor of Contemporary Australian Indigenous Art from Griffith University’s Queensland College of Art & Design. I currently work part-time as a Program Officer at Aboriginal Art Co while continuing to develop my own practice and create work for upcoming exhibitions.
Yes. Aboriginal Art Co is fortunate to partner with Aria Property and the Fish Lane Arts Precinct to showcase First Nations art within public spaces. Three vitrines across the precinct feature a selection of my existing artworks.
This body of work centres Ganalay, a native grain deeply connected to Gamilaroi foodways, cultural identity and relationships with Country. Before colonisation, native grains were carefully cultivated, harvested and processed into flour for bush breads. Today, these grasses are often overlooked, dismissed as weeds or remembered only through colonial names.
Through my practice, I seek to challenge these inherited ways of seeing by repositioning Ganalay as a holder of knowledge, recognising its role beyond a food source and as part of a living relationship with Country. Ganalay carries knowledge about reciprocity, sustainability and the deep connections between people, plants and place.
My Dhunbarr prints appropriate botanical illustrations from the eighteenth-century Banksian Florilegium, reclaiming these native grass species as beings already known, named and deeply understood by Gamilaroi peoples. The work challenges colonial narratives of discovery by recognising that these grasses are part of longstanding Indigenous knowledge systems, language and relationships with Country.
The large sculpture, Ganalay, The Bread of Life, draws on the visual language of stained-glass windows to honour Ganalay as a sacred presence. By placing a native grain, rather than a religious figure, within a form associated with worship, I seek to disrupt colonial ideas of reverence and instead centre Indigenous systems of knowing, caring and belonging.
Together, these works imagine new forms of legacy, challenging ideas of what is considered worthy of reverence and value while honouring the enduring relationships between First Nations peoples, plants and Country.
I began making jewellery and learning silver casting through university, later continuing through the gem club on Bribie Island, where I live. Initially, I was creating small-scale sculptural forms inspired by native grasses. As my practice developed, I became interested in bronze as a material and the way it carries associations with permanence, value and monumentality within the Western canon.
Bronze has historically been used to immortalise explorers, leaders and figures of authority. Through casting native grass in bronze and placing Ganalay as the subject within a stained-glass window, I question what and why we choose to revere, what we assign value to, and how these ideas differ across cultures and worldviews. By elevating a plant rather than a person, I seek to challenge anthropocentric systems that have positioned humans, particularly within colonial frameworks, as central and above the more-than-human world.
Through a First Nations worldview, plants and animals are not lesser beings; they are our kin, our teachers and our medicine. We exist in reciprocal relationship with them, learning from and caring for Country rather than seeking dominion over it.
By casting Ganalay in bronze and presenting it through a visual language associated with reverence and the sacred, I reposition this native grass as a being worthy of honour and recognise it as a living archive of ecological and cultural knowledge. The work invites audiences to reconsider where significance is placed, what forms of life are valued, and what we choose to remember as part of our collective legacy.
As a multidisciplinary artist, I enjoy working across different materials and processes, including jewellery, printmaking, papermaking and sculpture. I’m interested in how materials can hold meaning and how experimentation can strengthen the conceptual ideas within my work.
Recently, I have been making handmade paper from native grasses and silkscreen printing with ochres and charcoal, using materials that come from Country and can return to Country. This work will be exhibited at Cairns Indigenous Art Fair in July under the theme Reclamation and Regeneration.
A lot of this work has grown from time spent on Country with Di Hall, a fellow Contemporary Australian Indigenous Art graduate who now works at the grain research centre in Narrabri. I want to acknowledge Di and the generosity of her knowledge, guidance and the time we have spent together exploring native grains and their relationships to Country. Through photographing grasses, recording their sounds and working with seeds, these experiences have deeply informed my practice.
I am still learning and don’t position myself as a cultural knowledge holder. However, as a contemporary artist, I feel I can contribute to these conversations through visual language and help foreground the resilience and richness of First Nations knowledge systems.
For me, my practice begins as a personal act of self-expression, but it is also deeply connected to community. I have been on a long decolonial journey, alongside a process of deconstructing from religion, and much of my work explores reclaiming culture, language and practices that were historically suppressed through colonial and religious frameworks.
By questioning the ideologies and institutions that have shaped my own experiences, as well as the broader experiences of First Nations peoples through processes of assimilation, I see my practice as both an act of resistance and reclamation.
I think the most important advice I would give younger artists is to stay true to yourself and create from a place that feels authentic. Use art as a means of self-expression, not as a way of creating what you think others want to see.
Create for yourself and your community first, because that is where your work becomes meaningful and connected.
As Rick Rubin says, “My art is a diary entry,” and that really resonates with how I approach my own practice. Your experiences, emotions and perspective are unique to you, and that is what gives your work value.
The artists I connect with most are the ones where I can see their heart, their story and their way of seeing the world. That honesty creates connection.
Trust your own voice, stay vulnerable and the right people will connect with what you create.
The main takeaway I hope people take from my work is an understanding that First Nations cultures and ways of knowing are deeply sophisticated, interconnected and rich with knowledge.
My practice seeks to challenge outdated narratives that have portrayed Aboriginal people and cultures as primitive, uncivilised or in need of saving, instead highlighting the depth, complexity and strength of the world’s oldest living cultures.
My work is informed by my own journey of cultural reclamation and the broader experiences of First Nations peoples impacted by assimilation. Through my practice, I seek to honour the languages, beliefs and relationships to Country that have always existed, while challenging the ideas and systems that have tried to diminish them.
Ultimately, I want my work to empower my community, celebrate our cultural strength and share the knowledge, resilience and stories we have always carried.
Interview written by Waverly Stanley, edited by Amanda Hayman, 2026.
