Riding Through Air compiles poems, drawings and photographs made by Daniel Mudie Cunningham between 1993 and 1995. During this time, as a precocious art student at Western Sydney University (then UWS Nepean), Cunningham was frequently journaling stories, ideas, and poems, often accompanied by sketches or pasted ephemera. These journal entries map a period of deep contemplation for the artist, whose life is transmuting from religious conservatism to queer enfranchisement. 

The title of this anthology is taken from a line in Cunningham’s 1993 poem “Velocity,” which aptly muses on feelings of ambivalence and absence. The works selected for this publication, which represent only a portion of Cunningham’s prolific diarising, collectively chart experiences of love, loss, and becoming. 

Riding Through Air is an integral part of Cunningham’s survey exhibition Are You There? at Wollongong Art Gallery, intended to illustrate the important discursive tangents of the artist’s practice that function in concert with his videos and photographs.

Text by James Gatt

Listen to a reading of “Bicycle” (1994) by Daniel's brother Christopher.

Riding Through Air, 2023
Published by Wollongong Art Gallery
on the occasion of Daniel Mudie Cunningham: Are You There?
30 June – 10 September 2023
Edited by James Gatt
Designed by Justin Worsley
© Daniel Mudie Cunningham
ISBN 978-0-6456205-1-1