In the painting Mendoowoorrji – Medicine Pocket 2004, Bedford evokes the narrative that embodies a hillscape that stretches between the sites of Thoonbi and Thoowoonggoonarrin on his mother’s Country and an important camping place for Gija families before the arrival of Europeans. Here, two men in ancestral times fought violently with sticks and became the landscape. The ‘living water’ found along these hills is suggested by the luminosity or transparency of his paint, achieved though his wet-on-wet technique, which requires a fast method of application. This became a characteristic of his paintings made after 2004, most likely as a result of Bedford working consistently in gouache as a fluid and spontaneous practice alongside his larger paintings on canvas. (Text by Vanessa Merlino, Head of Research, D’Lan Contemporary)