Always wanting to paint the bushfire. Seen heaps of things with burning of heath land for Alcoa and went running through it like we were in the fire. It was beautiful but we were crying as we didn’t want them to do it. We were right in the middle of it as it was all glowing everywhere. Always fascinated by that fire when I think about it as we tried to stop it but they bought the police out and we couldn’t get in there as they had security and we were surrounded. We camped out there for four years we had the camp and would come and go from the house in town. Zac Martin and heaps of people in and out and good times with Uncle Banjo and newspaper journalists. 30 years ago this was, late 70’s and took 6 years to get them to court. Flew a guy out from America (the equaliser) who interviewed us about why we were doing it. They burnt right along the cliff whilst we were camped there and we had seen the seasons and got into the spirit of the land with native blossom and it was beautiful – and they burnt it all, all the little animals, it was incredible as the heathland was absolutely beautiful, it was magic and they could not see that. They pegged it out to do it all and we would sneak out and move the pegs and we tried to fight them every which way. Amy was there with all her kids in a massive striped tent but she moved them out when the police came to move us out. They had us surrounded, police from everywhere. We had no water and people would bring us water and food. Another time a big bushfire came through and we had to get in the dam at Lake Condah Mission. I was aged around 10 or 11.” June 2014 As recorded by Anna Louise Sheba for the entry in the Victorian Indigenous Arts Award Ballarat. Ms. Christina Isabel Saunders Traditional Landowner Elder Gundij Mara Tribe (South Western Victoria, Australia) Descendant of Kilcarer – Cape Bridgewater Clan and Gilgar - Lake Condah Mission Clan A depiction of bushfire. Red, yellow, orange and black paint. Swirls and shapes to represent the flames.Tina Saunders (bottom right in orange paint)aboriginal art, first nations, bushfire, bush, landscape

merri-bek public art collection

Jenna Lee dissects and reconstructs colonial 'Indigenous dictionaries' and embeds the works with new cultural meaning. Long obsessed with the duality of the destructive and healing properties that fire can yield, this element has been applied to the paper in the forms of burning and mark-making. In Without Us, Lee uses charcoal to conceal the text on the page, viewing this process as a ritualistic act of reclaiming and honouring Indigenous heritage while challenging the oppressive legacies of colonialism. Lee explains in Art Guide (2022), ‘These books in particular [used to create the proposed works] are Aboriginal language dictionaries—but there’s no such thing as “Aboriginal language”. There are hundreds of languages. The dictionary just presents words, with no reference to where they came from. It was specifically published by collating compendiums from the 1920s, 30s and 40s, with the purpose to give [non-Indigenous] people pleasant sounding Aboriginal words to name children, houses and boats. And yet the first things that were taken from us was our language, children, land and water. And the reason our words were so widely written down was because [white Australians] were trying to eradicate us. They thought we were going extinct. The deeper you get into it, the darker it gets. But the purpose of my work is to take those horrible things and cast them as something beautiful.’Framed artwork

The sarcastic title of this work pokes fun at the old fashioned idea that race should not be the subject of polite conversation. Deacon uses a white and a Black dolly to represent the unequal power dynamics that exist within Australian society. The dolls stand in for people who, based on the colour of their skin, experience the impact of racial inequality in vastly different ways. The cracked head of the white doll reveals an empty void. Symbolically violent, perhaps this emptiness suggests the dolls will never be able to fully comprehend one another’s experiences.This work was curated in RACE 2016 at Wyndham Art Gallery. Destiny Deacon (1956–2024) was a descendant of the KuKu (Far North Queensland) and Erub/Mer (Torres Strait) people. She exhibited nationally and internationally since the early 1990s in solo and group shows. Deacon held two major retrospectives, in 2004 and 2020, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney and at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne respectively. Her 2004 survey show, Walk & don’t look blak, toured to the Metropolitan Museum of Photography in Tokyo, the Tjibao Cultural Centre in Noumea, New Caledonia and Wellington City Gallery in New Zealand. In 2022, she was the recipient of the Red Ochre Award for Lifetime Achievement at First Nations Arts Awards. In the same year, Deacon’s work was shown at the Australian Embassy in Paris in an exhibition titled Destiny - The art of Destiny Deacon. In 2023, Deacon was included in the Sharjah Biennial 15, Thinking Historically in the Present, conceived by the late Okwui Enwezor and curated by Hoor Al Qasimi. In 2024, Deacon's work was exhibited in the 24th Biennale of Sydney, Ten Thousand Suns, curated by Cosmin Costinas and Inti Guerrero. Deacon’s work is held in most major public collections in Australia as well as Tate, London, Museum Moderner Kunst (MUMOK), Stifting Ludwig, Vienna, Austria and Museum Sammlung Essl, Austria.first nations photography, australian photography, australian indigenous art, race, racism, colonisation

Escape is a body of work by Taungurung/Filipino artist Alan Stewart made during Melbourne’s long lockdown to reflect his longing to connect to country. Alan says, “Country has always been my escape and connection to my culture. Without it, I lost a sense of self and a way to revitalise my spirit. Those early mornings and long drives helped me to see what’s special about being on country, land that holds such a deep meaning to my ancestors. I look back now and realise how lucky I was.”

Escape is a body of work by Taungurung/Filipino artist Alan Stewart made during Melbourne’s long lockdown to reflect his longing to connect to Country. Alan says, “Country has always been my escape and connection to my culture. Without it, I lost a sense of self and a way to revitalise my spirit. Those early mornings and long drives helped me to see what’s special about being on Country, land that holds such a deep meaning to my ancestors. I look back now and realise how lucky I was.”taungurung

This work is from a series centred around the Chinese proverb “to hold a book in one’s hand is to hold a house of gold” in which the artist positions himself within sites of colonial power. Set within the National Wool Museum gallery, the artist references the pose of an exhausted shearer after a long day of arduous labour. However he is reclining while reading The Fire Stick by Wulla Merrii, a novel set against the 1891 Queensland Shearer’s Strike, questioning cultural stereotypes and how they pertain to concepts of work and leisure. Dressed in sub fusc, his official uniform as an Oxford scholar, Thompson is a defiant intellectual challenging past and continued misperceptions of First Nations people, while embracing both the intersections of his identity and his ancestral heritage. Dr Christian Thompson AO is a Bidjara man of the Kunja Nation with Irish and Chinese heritage. His practice spans across video, photography, sculpture, textiles, performance and sound, evolving through a process of auto – ethnography. While employing various modes of research, he connects his own experience to larger social, political, cultural meanings and understandings. His doctoral research and art practice has had a critical impact on International and Australian art, making global history as one of the first Australian Indigenous students at Oxford University. In 2018 he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for distinguished services to the visual arts and as a role model to young indigenous artists in the Queen’s Birthday honours list.Framed photograph showing a man dressed in an academic gown, laying on their back holding a book. The setting is a reconstructed shearing shed, inside the galleries of the National Wool Museum.dr christian thompson, first nations, artwork, photography, oxford, heritage, national wool museum

Dr Briscoe was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Pain Medicine in 2008 and gifted the vase at the end of her term in 2010. Dr Briscoe was the first woman to be appointed Dean of the Faculty. The artist Robert Wynne is an accomplished glass artist in Australia. His artworks are held in significant public and private collections nation wide and overseas. Public collections include the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Artbank and the Queensland Contemporary Art Gallery. Wynne's artworks are also part of the private collections of Bill Clinton, Sir Elton John and the Royal Family Collection of Japan.Tear shaped, emerald green, hand-blown glassEtched on base - DENIZENdr briscoe, penelope (penny), wynne, robert, dean, faculty of pain medicine, fpm