John Teschendorff is acknowledged for his long-standing commitment to the interrogation of ideas of social and cultural import. Teschendorff is both well known and regarded for an enduring practice in drawing that is as highly layered and complex, as the subjects that he addresses. This exhibition The Tonsberg Saga 2013 - 2020, History of Ideas Series VII emanated from musings upon the events that began in August 2001 with the rescue at sea of some 438 asylum seekers by the master and crew of the Norwegian registered MV Tampa. He commenced a series of work informed by this in 2010 and recognises that it has resurfaced periodically across projects that have taken him to Spain in 2013, Iceland in 2016 and recently in Fremantle where his studio is based.

The Tonsberg Saga 2013 - 2020, History of Ideas Series VII is accompanied with an illustrated catalogue that includes an essay by Dr. Ric Spencer. In that Spencer makes the following observation:

'Punctuated with literary references and always eluding to the consequence of paths taken, John’s Tonsberg Saga reminds us of the inescapable stains that decisions place on memory and the history of ideas. As John puts it: things that don’t exist come into existence through ideas and when they do they need to take on a form; in the Tonsberg Saga ideas become mark makings that trace enigmatically but scrupulously the journey of a boat – a symbol for things that move in and out of our consciousness – which becomes an elegy for so much more.'