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Brook Andrew’s matriarchal kinship is from the kalar midday (land of the three rivers) of Wiradjuri, and Ngunnawal. His interdisciplinary practice harnesses alternative narratives to explore the legacies of colonisation and modernism. His artworks, museum interventions and curatorial projects challenge the limitations imposed by power structures, historical amnesia, stereotyping and complicity to centre Indigenous perspectives.

Brook Andrew, Travelling Colony (2019)

Travelling Colony is a growing body of work by internationally renowned artist Brook Andrew. This celebrated artist has been creating captivating interventions through painted caravans for over a decade. They highlight issues of race, history and dispossession of culture and Country. Inspired by his Wiradjuri tradition, he creates a cavalcade of dazzling hand-painted caravans. This iteration of the Travelling Colony was hand-painted by Aboriginal communities from the South East Queensland North region.

Robert Andrew is a descendant of the Yawuru people of the Broome area in the Kimberley, Western Australia, and holds European and Filipino heritage. With this connection to different lineages, his artistic practice explores identity and history, often by combining natural materials and contemporary technologies. His works erode and expose substrates, build stories and create material traces.

Robert Andrew, Presence (2020)

Presence is a new video work created with images captured from the artist’s solo show at the IMA in 2019, of the same name. Here Andrew exhibited a kinetic installation to create a new physical landscape that combines programmable technological machinery with string, earth pigments, ochres, rocks, and soil. In this projection work, the animated layers of the artist's work seem to leek down the building facade as the artwork attempts to visualise the whitewash of Aboriginal histories, stories, and connections to Country.

Artist Libby Harward is a descendant of the Ngugi people of Mulgumpin (Moreton Island) in the Quandamooka (Moreton Bay Area of Queensland).

Libby Harward’s arts practice is a continual process of re-calling - re-hearing - re-mapping - re-contextualising -de-colonising and reinstating culture on country that which colonisation has denied Australia’s First Peoples. Her place-based sound and video work challenges ideas of Country and sovereignty.

Libby Harward, ALREADY OCCUPIED - YUWAYI! JANA-N-BA WUNJAYI! (Goodbye! Go away now!) 2021

Already Occupied is an ongoing contemporary art project that explores Aboriginal sovereignty through the use of everyday signage – such as those used for traffic control. The project employs humour, language and materiality to spark conversations about Country and the artist’s connection to it.

Already Occupied recodes signs of construction/destruction and “safety” to privilege an Aboriginal frame of reference. In this project Libby uses hi-vis to reveal a language which has always occupied this continent. Ochre and mud converse with fluorescent polymers in acts of wayfinding, as star pickets, concrete, road cones, polyester, twine and road signs are code-switched to speak of the relationship between exploited land and the material from which colonialism is constructed, turning the tools of occupation into a vocabulary of resistance.

Sam Harrison is a Brisbane based artist and curator with cultural connections to Kamilaroi and Wiradjuri people of Central NSW. He completed a bachelor of Fine Arts (Painting) in 2018 from the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne.

His practice revolves around discussion and analysis of the Australian Identity. Firstly, utilizing historical and contemporary learning resources to re-conceptualize how we interpret the national story. Secondly, to create conversation in the present, about the present, to identify where and what we are as a collective, yet diverse cultural entity. Lastly, to think and envision what an increasingly connected, mobile and global future has in store for us.

Sam Harrison, Gold Rush X Slave Trade and Black Line X Emu (2021)

Gold Rush X Slave Trade and Black Line X Emu War are a part of a larger series titled Power is in the Details. This series is a response to Richard Lewer’s artwork, The History of Australia, in which the artist attempts to capture Australia’s history across 9 panels. PIITD talks to the lack of engagement with ground-breaking education resources created by Indigenous teachers and authors.

Keemon Williams is an interdisciplinary Brisbane (Meanjin) based artist of Koa, Kuku Yalanji and Meriam Mir descent. He utilizes a diverse range of mediums and performative elements to interrogate the relationships between location, personal histories and the manifestation of culture in a postcolonial world. His practice seeks to critically examine perceptions of national identity and the personal within the wider context of being “Australian”. Responding to realms of architecture, cultural production and psuedo-ethnic representations, Keemon reconciles a sense of occupancy within the everyday.

Keemon Williams, RECOVERY (Baralaba) 2020 & ACCLIMATION (Meanjin) 2021, Photograph(s)

These works are a part of a photographic series about healing on Country. The first portrait is of the artist on Country near Baralaba, central Queensland and the second is of the artist in Brisbane’s CBD. Keemon was in Baralaba when the pandamic reached Australia and he experienced the first covid lockdown in the remote Aboriginal community of Woorabinda. This was a time where he was able to reconnect with nature and grasp how his body is relative to its surroundings. A year on, and he is in a fast-changing urban environment that he no longer finds familiar. Keemon’s work interrogates personality, indigeneity and the transience of space.

Karla Dickens is an artist of Wiradjuri, Irish and German heritage, who has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Dickens' important group exhibitions include Defying Empire: 3rd National Indigenous Art Triennial at the National Gallery of Australia (2017); The National 2017: New Australian Art, Carriageworks, Sydney and Grounded: Contemporary Australian Art at the National Art School Gallery, Sydney (2017). Her work is held in major collections including the National Gallery of Australia; National Museum of Australia, Canberra; Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney; and Artbank, Sydney. She is represented by Andrew Baker Art Dealer, Brisbane.

A Dickensian Country Show, 2020

A dark side of the circus
behind the lights and make-up of the show
is the hard reality of artists and show-people
who are glued together with blood, sweat and tears
searching for hope for a home-away-from-home

…

Hannah Brontë is an artist and DJ whose art practice draws on the natural environment, and the empowerment of Indigenous, Black and Brown women, and spans photography, textiles and video. Influenced by her love for rap and the power of spoken word, she explores language in popular culture, hip-hop, and slang.

Hannah Brontë, Futcha Ancient (2018)

Futcha Ancient visualises the strength of our matriarchs and the power that erupts from Country.

HWY lightboxes feature two photographs from the striking series of portraits of Indigenous women intertwined with the landscape. They stand fearless and proud with their temerarious disposition, simultaneously representing Mother Earth and the female body, the work captures the resilient, nurturing, protective culture that safeguard our futures.

Casey Coolwell is a Quandamooka, Nunukul woman from Minjerribah with links to Eulo and the Birri people of Bowen. She is an Aboriginal artist and self-taught graphic designer and her digital-based art and design practice is built around her connections to country and stories from her elders and community.

Casey Coolwell-Fisher, Two Waters (2020)

Two Waters traces the journey and captures the moment where saltwater magically meets the freshwater. Particularly referencing waterways important to the artist - Campembah Creek (Myora Springs) on Minjerribah (North Stradbroke Island), this digital work uses bold line work and organic shapes to represent the mixing of salt and freshwater, through the crossing paths of sand and dirt, shells and leaves and also depicts mangroves and paperbark trees. It acknowledges the traces of these elements are forever present and embedded in Country.