Two extraordinary solo exhibitions currently on display at Bundanon art museum in New South Wales demonstrate how art, when created with intent and power, can serve as a container for everything: the universe, time, and what exists before and after time itself.

Betty Kuntiwa Pumani's "malatja-malatja (those who come after)" and David Sequeira's "The Shape of Music" present viewers with a unique challenge - how to experience two separate yet somehow connected artistic worlds that encompass entire universes of meaning.

Reviewing two simultaneous solo exhibitions at one gallery raises intriguing questions about their relationship. Should they be viewed as separate entities that simply share physical proximity, or do they engage in conversation with each other? Perhaps they represent two sides of the same artistic coin, exploring similar themes through vastly different approaches.

Betty Kuntiwa Pumani's exhibition centers on Antara, a sacred place and Indigenous Protected Area in the APY (Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara) lands near the center of the Australian continent. For Pumani, whose mother's Country this is, Antara represents the center of the universe in both spiritual and material terms. From an astrophysical perspective, this interpretation holds scientific truth - since the universe has no fixed center, the center exists everywhere, and each person carries the center of the universe with them.

Bundanon itself occupies this same universal centrality, situated on sacred Dharawal and Dhurga lands. Pumani dedicates her artistic practice to painting one subject exclusively: her Country, Antara. Yet this sacred place contains within it everything in the universe, echoing the opening lines of William Blake's "Auguries of Innocence": "To see a world in a grain of sand / And a heaven in a wild flower, / Hold infinity in the palm of your hand / And eternity in an hour."

Pumani's canvases capture entire worlds through their composition and symbolism. She paints the red of the land - representing blood, ancestry, connection, and people - upon deep blue grounds that suggest the night sky. Against this cosmic backdrop, star-like white native tobacco flowers bloom, representing an important medicine plant. The patterns swirl like galaxies, water, and dust in the breeze, bringing to mind the Hermetic tradition's principle: "That which is above is like to that which is below, and that which is below is like to that which is above," often simplified as "as above, so below."

This exhibition transcends a typical retrospective of a single artist's work. The collection spans multiple generations, featuring pieces by Pumani's mother, Kunmanara (Milatjari) Pumani, who founded the arts center where Betty works. It also includes works by her senior sister, Kunmanara (Ngupulya) Pumani, who served on the arts center board, and a collaborative painting created by Betty and her daughter, Marina Pumani Brown.

This multigenerational presentation demonstrates how knowledge and cultural ownership continue and live on from generation to generation - the only path for culture to survive. Some works in the exhibition are "keeping place" pieces, while others are on loan from various collections. Many have never been displayed together before and may never be again. The exhibition also features an exquisite work commissioned specifically by Bundanon.

Retrospectives of living women artists remain rare, and those featuring living Aboriginal women are even more uncommon, making this exhibition particularly significant in the contemporary art world.

In the museum's other main gallery space, David Sequeira presents "The Shape of Music," offering a completely different artistic approach. Sequeira works as an academic, curator, and practicing artist who explores the intersections of color, geometry, and sound, bringing mystical elements back into the Western art tradition. His exhibition engages with abstraction and infinity, questioning form, shape, and beauty while interrogating the universe itself.

The centerpiece of Sequeira's exhibition is the commissioned work "Form from the Formless (Under Bundanon Stars)" (2025). Thirty music stands arrange themselves in a circle in the room's center, with an empty focal point between them. Each stand holds a piece of music manuscript paper featuring the artist's painted view of the night sky above the site. On the paper's reverse side, Sequeira has painted overlapping circles of color in his signature style, reflecting the star fields' palette. A custom soundtrack, curated and commissioned by the artist, fills the space - a minimalist yet expansive "song of space" that serves as a love letter to the sky.

Sequeira began this commissioned work with photographs of Bundanon's night sky taken by a friend. He reproduced these photographs with reverence, creating painted copies smaller than the original photos. In a world of cheap reproductions, these painted versions become precious - the act of painting transforms them into something more meaningful.

Surrounding this central installation on three sides are prints of overlapping colored circles, demonstrating how colors blend and transform with each layer. The fourth wall features a shelf of glass beaker-shaped vases in various sizes and colors, mixing light and projecting the results onto the wall behind them.

A third artist joins the conversation with Sequeira: Arthur Boyd, who donated the Bundanon site to the Australian people to serve as a gallery and art center. In the corridor leading to Sequeira's installation, one long wall displays Boyd's "A Sacred Conversation" (2007), which explores the abstracted geometry of intersecting halos of St. Francis of Assisi and St. Louis of Toulouse from a 19th-century painting through a series of colored panels. Across the hall, Boyd's St. Francis of Assisi paintings create contrast and dialogue with this work.

This creates multiple layers of artistic conversation - between Sequeira and the vintage panel, between the two contemporary artists, and among all three artists including Boyd. Bundanon itself becomes another partner in these conversations, particularly through the site-specific nature of Sequeira's work, which directly references the night sky above the gallery.

Ultimately, examining these exhibitions separately becomes impossible. Together, they contain everything: Earth, sky, and the outward reach to the universe. They converse with each other as visitors move through the space, and they engage with the universe itself, with time, space, land, spirit, and meaning - reaching toward infinity and returning to the earth.

The exhibitions create a fractal world where diving deeper reveals infinite detail, where edges stretch infinitely despite existing in finite space. Both artists, through their distinct approaches, capture the essence of what art can achieve when it serves as a container for universal truths.

Both "Betty Kuntiwa Pumani: malatja-malatja (those who come after)" and "David Sequeira: The Shape of Music" will remain on display at Bundanon in New South Wales until October 5, offering visitors a unique opportunity to experience these complementary visions of artistic universe-making.