Since the early 20th century, motor vehicles of all descriptions have been central characters in the settlement, governance and representation of non-urban Australia. They are objects of desire and exchange, characters in subsistence, ceremonial and market economies and sites of projective identification. Represented in paintings, films, novels, music, ethnography, ceremony and other media, vehicles communicate closely with the aesthetic spirits of modernity and its discontents. Vehicles add velocity to landscape’s powers, compressing distance and reframing senses of place. Containing, carrying and connecting people, knowledge, visions and voices, motor cars are deeply phenomenological spaces.

Cruising Country will explore these and other conjunctures of Australian automobility, intercultural exchange, power and social transformation through a series of presentations, panel discussions and film screenings.