Alana Hunt’s solo exhibition and major new commission, A Deceptively Simple Need extends Hunt’s ongoing investigations into the complexities surrounding non-indigenous life on stolen land. Drawing on her experiences in Kununurra, Hunt’s work examines how everyday activities – such as tourism, leisure and land development – are intricately linked to injustices and colonisation. 

A Deceptively Simple Need follows Hunt’s earlier film, Surveilling a Crime Scene (2023), which presents a close study of non-indigenous life on Miriwoong Country in far northern Western Australia. In the concluding words of the film: ‘It is a story about the violence that underpins our deceptively simple need for a home on other people’s land.’  

Stemming directly from these words, Hunt’s commission examines notions of private home ownership and its relationship to (Great Australian) dreams of development within our settler colonial context. Hunt engages with the idea of home not just as a physical space but as a concept imbued with layers of meaning, often built on the dispossession of Indigenous peoples. 

Central to this examination is the artist’s research into state-sponsored films produced in Western Australia during the 1960s and 1970s, now held in the collection of the State Library of Western Australia. Drawing threads between a range of histories, sentiments, economies and lived experiences, A Deceptively Simple Need weaves together a sensitive study of the inherent violence in the basic need for housing within a settler-colonial system, often masked by day-to-day life.  

Guest curated by Jasmin Stephens, A Deceptively Simple Need marks the fourth in a series of annual commissions funded by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund. In partnership with PICA, the $80,000 Commission supports a mid-career artist to develop a major new body of work.