The Great Boat Approaches by Deborah Norrie-Jones

The Great Boat Approaches brings together poetry, archival works and recent artworks by Meanjin/Brisbane-based artist Deborah Norrie-Jones.

The exhibition is an inquiry into relationships and mortality, tracing Deborah's journey through her husband's terminal illness, their travels together, their return to the homeland, and life after his death. Poetry sits alongside gestural charcoal and pastel drawings, watercolours, oil paintings and recent abstract figurative acrylic works.

Informed by Expressionism and Deborah's background in arts therapy, her practice begins intuitively, with what she describes as a "felt sense on the edge of the unknown". Rapid mark-making is followed by reflection, layering and refinement, allowing images and meanings to emerge gradually.

Many of the earlier works grew from an early morning practice of charcoal drawing during her husband's illness. Across the exhibition, fear, doubt, hope, faith, pain, love, despair and confusion move in and out of focus. Recurring images of boats, water, cliffs and distant landscapes become part of a visual language shaped by memory, travel and lived experience.

Rather than presenting a fixed narrative, Deborah leaves space for viewers to bring their own experiences to the work and find their own meanings within it.

This exhibition will also support Cancer Council, with Creative Room Art Space donating 5% of the sale price of original works sold through the gallery from its commission.

9 October – 4 November 2026