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A painting can open a portal into the past in a way a photograph cannot. Cherished memories seem more real and present when you have something physical to look at, a solid thing to hold in your hands, rather than just a collection of ephemeral pixels capturing a quick moment in time.
It’s what photographer Nirrimi Firebrace discovered a year ago as she carefully unrolled a painting posted to her by her mother from across the country.
A little battered in the corners, faded and creased in places, the rich orange and red ochres of the traditional Indigenous painting still glowed true and strong in the light. Two tiny toddler handprints in white paint stood out like a pair of starfish. One imprint belonged to her, age three. The other belonged to her brother Zake, a year younger.
For Firebrace, now 28, and an award-winning photographer who first took the international advertising world by storm in her teens, the painting opened a series of windows into the past. Memories, mostly bittersweet, flooded back in an instant.
Nirrimi's painting brings back strong memories Source: Jarrad Seng
Created by her father Frances, a Yorta Yorta man who had been largely absent throughout her childhood in Townsville, northern Queensland, this humble canvas square captured his creative spark and spirit in a way a simple photograph could not have done.
“When I unrolled it, it brought back one of my earliest memories, of my brother and I, sitting in my dad’s garage and him teaching us how to paint in the Indigenous style - this was one of the paintings we did together. I could see and feel those little prints of our hands on there. I think I was three and my brother was two. The handprints were so tiny so we must have been really little.”
Born in Sydney but raised in Townsville amidst childhood abuse and impoverishment, Firebrace found an escape at an early age through art - first through writing stories, and then taking photographs of her family and friends with her mother’s camera from age 13. She left school at 15 and moved to Melbourne where she was soon making her mark despite her lack of photographic training. The fresh, unstaged intimacy of her photos caught the eye of judges at the Qantas Spirit of Youth (SOYA) awards, one the country’s leading grants program for emerging creatives, and she ended up taking the top prize. Previous winners had gone on to work with industrial designer Marc Newson in Paris, edited scripts with film director Rowan Woods, worked alongside Gillian Armstrong and recorded with Paul Mac. Firebrace was soon on a similarly dazzling creative trajectory.
Nirrimi feels a strong connection to family when she looks at her painting Source: Jarrad Seng
“I remember coming off that stage and having multiple people from different agencies coming up and wanting to sign me so I went with the biggest one. I flew to New York to shoot for Diesel, and then travelled around Europe shooting for Billabong. I did a bunch of big campaigns and saw my photographs on billboards and the side of buses.”
Back home, Firebrace continued to travel light, a practice she had adopted since leaving home at 15. When she unrolled her father’s painting a year ago, however, something shifted. In a life with so few roots and anchors, it would quickly become a cherished possession, a powerful talisman and source of comfort, particularly in the aftermath of a devastating family tragedy.
Cognitive philosophers say that physical objects can be so valuable because they carry part of the past of with them. They open portals into shared childhood experiences, memories, helping us to remember people, moments, emotions and places that might otherwise be lost to the mists of time.
It would explain the findings of a 2019 British insurance survey that found that when participants were asked what they would save if their house on a fire, the overwhelming majority chose objects which had the best capacity to evoke memories. Photo albums, paintings, wedding dresses and childhood toys trumped high-value items like cars and other expensive status symbols.
Can an ordinary object hold that much meaning? Yes, she says, simply. Like Proust with his madeleines, her father’s painting has become a priceless repository of stories, sensory cues and images, an affirmation of identity, visual link to a father she has few memories of, and a cultural symbol of their shared Indigenous bloodlines: “it’s a reminder of all the Dreamtime stories my father told me and a connection to my cultural heritage.”
A shelf of Nirrimi's ceramics in her Fremantle studio Source: Jarrad Seng
Even more critically, it has, for her, taken on a particularly poignant value as a conduit to a happier, more innocent time, when she still had a little brother who would follow her around and mimic her every move, a small, lovable shadow whom she could play with, share stories, comfort as their troubled family fell apart and her father moved away.
Zake killed himself five years ago, at just 22, she says. He suffered sexual abuse as a teen and was plagued by mental health issues. “He was finally diagnosed with Asperger’s when he was 18 but he spent his whole childhood being labelled a bad kid that nobody understood.” His death was shattering and so sudden it felt like she had lost her bearings in the world; as she would later write: “he had been the only one to share my scars, the only one who understood our past and suddenly he was gone.”
Heightening her grief was the fact she had nothing physical, in a meaningful sense, to remember him by - not even proper portraits of the two of them together. It is something she still mourns today, and is why she clings to the imprints of those two tiny handprints on her father’s painting. “They’re even more important because they are a memento of my brother, a tangible thing.”
Nirrimi paints newly fired ceramics in her Fremantle studio Source: Jarrad Seng
After his death, she spent months offering up her time to strangers to take free photographs of them, “just people who loved one another, basically,” listening to their stories and helping them build memories. It has proved deeply cathartic - and a humbling life lesson in the importance of having physical reminders of loved ones, no matter how ordinary or humble. Her father’s painting has taught her that, about the fragility of life, the bonds of family that remain despite the passage of time and trauma, how physical objects can evoke lost memories and bring loved ones back to life.
For her today, the painting is both a map of the past as well as the present and future, a chart of personal songlines that remind her that ties of kin don’t disappear when we die or move away. It links her father to her, and she to her brother – and the links of the chain now include her daughter Alba, 10, and the new baby she is expecting shortly. It will, in time, become a family heirloom, to be passed onto her own children and their children. New handprints may be added.
Loss is embedded in the canvas, but so too hope and rejuvenation. “It means so much to me because it represents so much of me, who I am and my past.”
At , we see what you see because we’re local too. We drive on the same roads, live in the same suburbs, and have shared WA experiences. So when it comes to protecting your most priceless possessions, our local team is here to help. 
Nirrimi cuddles Ru in her Fremantle studio Source: Jarrad Seng
