Shellharbour Airport will launch its first free art exhibition on Wednesday, March at 6pm, with award-winning artist Anna Glynn transforming the terminal into a vibrant cultural space.

Glynn, who was most recently selected as a finalist in the national biennial Alice Prize, will present a collection of early works created between the 1990s and 2010s.

“Most of the work depicts various places on the South Coast, with myths and tales from history transposed onto the landscapes,” Glynn said.

The exhibition features pieces from the Bundanon Series, in which theatrical characters of the local bush appear in vivid colour, alongside the playful Squid Juggling on Jervis Bay, a lively self-portrait filled with spray and sky.

Fauna - both imagined and real - feature in works such as Sussex Inlet and Kangaroo Valley Myth.

Further inside the terminal is one of the exhibition’s highlights: a nine-panel painting titled Shoalhaven Drowning.

The nine-panel painting titled Shoalhaven Drowning. Photo: Anna Glynn

“It is nine panels, and quite a monumental work which was last shown in Shanghai, where I was invited by DFAT to represent Australia as part of the Australian Pavilion at the Shanghai International Art Fair in 2007,” Glynn said.

“Shellharbour Council and Airport have been so generous with their time and support, creating a space for art to be hung and enjoyed. It has been a great experience working with them.”

She draws inspiration from the way places shift and change over time.

“Whenever I’m in a place, I imagine its past. My mind is constantly picturing different images in the landscape, and that’s where I usually get my inspiration to create paint,” she said.

Art curator Dr Natalie McDonagh has said of Anna Glynn’s works that “you may find yourself having an Alice-Through-the-Looking-Glass experience, entering a strange world. It may be unnerving at times, but you will be rewarded in ways impossible to predict.”

Glynn said she was honoured to inaugurate the airport’s new cultural chapter.

“It really is a beautiful space. You’ve got the gallery and the café, and then the view across the runway is to the mountains and the Illawarra Escarpment.

It’s a unique setting, and it’s been wonderful to revisit my older works and be surprised by what I’ve created throughout my career, and let them breathe life into this new space” she said.

The exhibition, titled Anna Glynn: South Coast Myths Tales - Early Works Gathered, Autobiographical & Imagined, 1990s–2010s, runs from Thursday, 5 March, to Tuesday, 21 April 2026, and is free to attend.