Visual art · 2026  |  Phoebe Maroulis
Part of Inspired by Her, the annual creative programme of The Orana Every Woman Festival. Curated by Erifili Davis. Exhibited at The Greens, Dubbo — free, for the full seven days of the festival.

Created in response to the Inspired by Her brief. Exhibited as part of the 2026 Orana Every Woman Festival, Dubbo NSW. By Phoebe Maroulis.

A Bouquet of Flowers inhabits the ornate Victorian photograph album as both inheritance and interrogation. In the nineteenth century, the floral frame functioned as more than decoration — it structured meaning. Ornament conferred legitimacy, signalling that what lay within was worthy of preservation and display.

Within this album, however, the images resist easy classification. Abstracted landscapes, a mob of cattle, the Sydney Opera House, shifting textures and patterns sit within the decorative border. Together they form a subtle self-portrait, an inquiry into belonging, displacement, and the layered identities of a woman living in Western NSW.

By placing contemporary regional experience inside a Victorian frame, the work questions why ornament grants authority. Does the floral border stabilise the image, or expose the constructed nature of what we deem “cultured” and worthy?

The album becomes both homage and critique, embracing beauty unapologetically while unsettling the historical power embedded within it.

Phoebe Maroulis is a visual artist, land steward, and social impact practitioner living in rural Australia. Her work emerges at the meeting point of creativity, culture, and community, guided by deep listening to place. She often begins on canvases already marked, honouring the truth that nothing begins blank, just as the Country she creates on has always held story and care. Phoebe sees herself as holding a baton briefly and reverently, creating in response to land, memory, and kinship. Her practice is an act of offering and remembering, shaped by the mystery of belonging to something larger than ourselves.

Eight women. Eight responses to the same brief.

Inspired by Her invites women artists and writers to make new work inspired by the lives, voices and stories of women from our region’s past. The 2026 exhibition opened on Monday 2 March at the Macquarie Conservatorium, with a Wiradjuri Welcome to Country by Aunty Diane McNaboe, alongside novelist Eleanor Limprecht and performer Rachael Beck.

• Tin Town Tess — Erifili Davis
• Something New — Kalina Davis
• COVID Lockdown — Nisaba Merrieweather
• Homecoming — Nisaba Merrieweather
• Icon — Jude Morrell
• Wambuul: Echoes of the Turning Tide — Sophia Johnson
• Nonna. Mother. Daughter. — Milena Sallustio

See the full Inspired by Her 2026 programme →  |  The brief is open again for 2027 →