The Lodge is the third moving image work in Amala Groom’s Raised by Wolves series, following The Proposal (2022), and The Union (2019). Autobiographical in nature, the series explores the relationship between alchemy (spirit) and science (matter), following the belief that life is a marriage of these forces, with the human being as the ultimate construct between them.
Filmed on Ngunnawal Country in Canberra’s Parliamentary Triangle, The Lodge engages with Groom’s history of direct action at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy and ceremonial rites of passage within and without the halls of Parliament House spanning the past 20 years from activist to advocate to artist. The work references David Lynch’s Twin Peaks and its White and Black Lodges, reinterpreting them as the indivisible duality of ‘light’ and ‘dark’—a dynamic embodied by Canberra’s historical and political landscape.
Wearing a wedding dress, Groom symbolically weaves and unravels a red rope along Anzac Parade, embodying both colonial constraint and ancestral connection. The work culminates in her transformation—empowered by the fire at the Tent Embassy, running through Parliament House she ultimately vanishes into the bush as a sovereign Wiradyuri woman.
Image credit: Amala Groom, The Lodge, 2025 (production stills) single-channel video, 6K UHD video, colour, sound, 11:11 mins. Image credit: Ryan Andrew Lee.
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