That’s the question being asked by one artist, with a body of work stretching over 10 years and an exhibition now showing at the Queen Victoria Art Gallery.

Mandy Hunniford’s The Midlands: Whimsy and Pathos attempts to prompt and encourage conversation around the region through the historical and contemporary narratives there to be discovered in it’s flora, architecture and varied landscapes.

Hunniford might have been born in Queenstown, but much of her work has involved exploring the towns off the Midland Highway she has been passing through her entire life.

“Really it’s about the communities and the stories and the secrets that the towns hold,” she said.

QVMAG’s curator of visual art and design Ashleigh Whatling thought Hunniford’s long-running “fascination” with the region was evident in the work.

“Over the last 10 yeas she’s been building up this body of work that just explores a lot of the history and is interested in how contested the midlands are in terms of Aboriginal custodianship, colonialism [and] the effects of our farming on those lands,” she said.

“She’s done a little mini series on the topiary animals that are down near Oatlands, she’s done a series on the Female Factory and the Horton College at Ross.”

Ms Whatling referred to another about one of the earliest phone calls made in the southern hemisphere taking place in Campbell Town, “she’s kind of interested in those little stories that come out of the Midlands”. 

“This is where the whimsy comes in, these kind of sweet little stories… but then there’s this other side which is the convict story – the female factory. She’s done a work called River of Blood which is about the massacre of Aboriginal people during colonisation.”

Ms Whatling noted the generosity of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Corporation in collaborating throughout the organising of the exhibition.

“It’s a pretty rich landscape for an artist to pull out all kinds of different stories and perspectives. It’s as much about the aesthetics of the landscape as it is about the history,” she said.

Through that initial looking – and an interest in history fostered by other projects with the National Trust – those stories were always going to be drawn out through the work, stories that touch on both the whimsical and what lies beneath.

“You've got the two, and somehow they relate to each other,” Hunniford said.

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