This exhibition reflects the artist’s experiences living and working with Aboriginal communities in the Western Desert and Kimberley regions. As a field officer with Papunya Tula Artists in 2008-2009, Mackinnon witnessed both the extraordinary beauty of Aboriginal Country and the complex realities of remote community life, where isolation and hardship are balanced with cultural vitality and humour.

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In Phoenix, Mackinnon transforms everyday moments - long desert roads, a football game, abandoned cars - into scenes charged with emotional intensity. The rusting machinery, dark skies and quiet figures that inhabit his canvases are not symbols of despair but testaments to resilience.

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Presented with permission from Papunya Tula Artists, these paintings represent the artist’s reckoning with his experiences of that time, an empathetic meditation on beauty and survival.