GW Bot

REGENERATION GLYPHS
Grainger Gallery 12 FEB ~ 1 MARCH 2026

“In the darkest moments in life there is still hope for regeneration. Even after the most severe drought or after the worst bushfire, there will appear the green shoots of rebirth. Even in death, there is a promise of rebirth and regeneration. Nature in the most acute moments of distress shows the path for regeneration as a display of the ultimate gift of generosity of spirit.

My art, in the present series of work, taps into this regenerative spirit.”
GW Bot 2026

Essay
Peter Haynes

GW Bot’s current exhibition is a visual and philosophical meditation on the concept of regeneration. For the artist regeneration elides the aesthetic, the personal, the societal and the political. That said what viewers are presented with is not a
declamatory set of visual propaganda, but rather a quietly insinuative and seductive collection of individual works whose interrogative inclusions are embraced as part of the artist’s aesthetic armoury, imparting an incisive edge while underscoring the visual thrust that empowers each work.

Bot’s art is predicated on the use of her signature language of glyphs, a language that maintains a pictorial acuity and singular attraction that for me increases with its continuing use and aesthetic and conceptual appropriateness. The artist’s use of
glyphs is never tired but expresses a commanding understanding of the possibilities innate in each glyph, both in isolation (for example, Child and Moon Glyphs, and Glyph I and Glyph II) and in combination ( Regeneration Glyphs: Ocean, To walk
across a field, The Prophet, and Followed by a Glyph Shadow). Bot’s alphabet of glyphs holds no limitations. Its variations are infinite and it is in this characteristic that each glyphic iteration holds not just visual novelty and expressive force but
possibilities for multiple shades of meaning, multiple openings to the individual viewer.

In Regeneration Glyphs Bot presents a panoply of mediums - linocuts, watercolours, cut paper works, an oil, a woodcut, and relief sculptures in steel and wood. This richness of mediums finds equivalence in the explosion of visual motifs
whose continued reuse invests each with renewed energy and identity in new iterations. Linocuts predominate, and Celestial Poet (2021), continues the artist’s use of the poet as a layered metaphor simultaneously embracing the poet as messenger
and message, artist and image. It is a recurring motif in Bot’s oeuvre and one whose aesthetic and conceptual resonance has not abated. The poet here is personified in the image of the moon floating in a flurry of black lines, variously vertical and
horizontal that, constitute the titular celestial area. Bot’s clear demarcation between sky and earth is not a sharp conceptual division (despite its graphic clarity). Rather it is a place for pause, a visual and philosophical resting point. The terrestrial area
drops in an elegant flow, its surface activated by row upon row of carefully delineated dots, varying in tonal intensity. This quality imbues the work with a beautifully nuanced rhythmical lyricism, a characteristic that is endemic throughout the artist’s
oeuvre. While Blue Moon Poet (2026) holds similarities with the previous work, its differences elucidate the artist’s unerring ability to provide fresh articulations of earlier iterations, investing in these new meanings, pictorial associations and
aesthetic impact. Others of the linocuts exemplify the variety and range of the artist’s expressive possibilities. Regeneration Glyphs: Rebirth I and II (2026) each holds an extraordinary visual power. Bot’s use of contrast is always extensive and eloquently appropriate. Combined with her exceptional understanding of the aesthetic depth of black. The results are visually and philosophically dramatic and captivating. The drama in Bot’s works is simply but powerfully articulated in the aesthetic choices she has made to convey mood and possibilities for renewal. This is achieved with that marvellously direct and vehemently present black arboreal motif on the right-hand edge of the first, and the left-hand edge of the second of the two works. The dense singularity of the black is simultaneously visual stop and introduction to the deep space and beautifully activated space that falls behind them. The contrast of stillness (stasis) and movement (kinesis) in combination with tonal variation and intersecting perspectives brings a particular gravitas to these handsome exercises in aesthetic and spiritual contemplation.

Bot’s use of colour to imbue a sense of exhilarating lightness and joy-filled visual excursion is delightfully configured in another early work – To walk across a field (2006). Variously coloured glyphs aligned in linear regularity move across the field (which is the Tapa cloth on which they sit). The lightness so appropriately depicted here is cleverly achieved through a number of aesthetic choice. The overt tonal contrasts, particularly as exposed between each pictorial motif and the creamy tapa
cloth, clearly demonstrates the artist’s deliberate and care full choice of surface, choices redolent throughout this exhibition in the selection of papers and other “bases” as partners to most effectively convey her intentions. Bot’s combination of watercolour with graphite powerfully illustrates her astute understanding of the qualities inherent in each medium that will best convey her philosophical and aesthetic intentions. The earliest work in the exhibition, Winter Glyphs (2009) is a supreme example of the graphic eloquence innate in the artist’s understanding of the efficacious use of black and its combination with line. The pictorial surface is filled with densely toned black glyphs which dance across the picture plane accompanied by groups of black lines inserted in seemingly random (but eminently appropriate) placements. The insertion of the lines imparts not just an air of elegant graphic delicacy. Their placement behind the more visually assertive black glyphs, creates a layered spatial configuration giving perspectival depth and a quietly insistent kinetic quality to the overall composition.
I have selected a few works for discussion from this exhibition which exemplify the visually and conceptually rich artistic persona that is GW Bot. There is a lot more that could be said but individual exploration of this artist’s work will result in not just
aesthetic delectation but in ways to view our world and ourselves in ways perhaps not previously considered. The art of GW Bot is a beautiful pointer to the redemptive qualities that separate important art from good art. This is an exemplary exhibition.

Peter Haynes
Cowra
February 2026

GW BOT-BIO
GW Bot is a leading Australian artist who has been practicing as a full-time artist for more than 40 years. GW Bot is a printmaker, painter, sculptor and graphic artist who has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally. She has had held over 60 solo exhibitions, including shows in Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Brisbane, London, Paris, New York and Los Angeles. She has participated in over 300 group and invitational exhibitions. She is the recipient of numerous commissions and has been awarded residencies in Europe, Asia and Australia.

Her work was represented in the Know my Name exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia, 2021 and touring exhibition in 2024-25. Her work was also included in the Australia exhibition, at the Royal Academy, London (2013). Out of Australia: prints and drawings from Sidney Nolan to Rover Thomas, British Museum, London (2011) and in The story of Australian printmaking 1803- 2005, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (2007). Her survey exhibition GW Bot: The Long Paddock: A 30-year survey, toured nationally from 2010 to 2013.

GW Bot’s work is held in over a hundred public art collections nationally and internationally, including: National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Albertina, Vienna, Austria; British Museum, London; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Fogg Museum of Fine Arts, Harvard University, Cambridge MA, USA; Kharkiv Art Gallery, Ukraine; Lublin Museum, Poland; Museum of Modern Art, Osaka, Japan; Queensland Art Gallery; Art Gallery of South Australia; Art Gallery of NSW; Mornington Peninsula Art Gallery Collection; Parliament House Art Collection, Canberra; Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston; National Library of Australia, Canberra; Mitchell Library, Sydney; State Library Victoria, Melbourne, Araluen Art Centre, Alice Springs; Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, Peoples Republic of China and Artbank, Australia.

The artist explains the choice of her exhibiting name, a choice she made some 40 years ago. “According to Aboriginal totemic belief, each member of a clan inherits a totemic relationship with a particular plant or animal of the region. I like this idea of oneness with the environment. Where I live wombats are especially prevalent and they have become my
totemic animal. The earliest written reference to a wombat occurs in a French source where it is called ‘le grand Wam Bot,’ and hence my exhibiting name – GW Bot.”

GW Bot was born in Quetta, Pakistan, of Australian parents, and studied art in London, Paris and Australia and graduated from the Australian National University in 1982. Her drawings were first published as illustrations in a book in London in 1980 and since 1985 she had worked as a full-time artist maintaining an independent studio practice.