Cup a small amount of water in your hands. It is precious. A rare group of coolamons from Western Queensland date back 100 years — they were made to hold water, grain or a newborn child. These artworks remind us of the scarcity of water and the long history of culture, technology and innovation that has sustained life in this dry land.

Lorraine Connelly-Northey works from Swan Hill on the Murray River, and the fragile forms of her narrbong (string bags) are fashioned from discarded flywire, echidna quills, pelican down and galah feathers. Nicole Foreshew adapts natural processes over years, burying timber ‘limbs’ on country, encouraging the action of water as it seeps into the earth to adorn each piece of wood with pink and ochre-hued crystals. Across Bass Strait, Lola Greeno, best known for her luminous maireener shell necklaces, keeps cultural practices alive by making traditional kelp water carriers, or rika.

In her film Mayaŋ 2011, Ruby Djikarra Alderton shares her childhood experience of water and the joy of swimming in a creek. The water glows amber and green in the sunlight. Alderton was a teenager when she made the film, not much older than the children shown swimming with such energy. ‘For me’, she says, ‘this water, it’s always been a part of me’.