My Country: Country Road + NGV unveils new works by emerging First Nations artists

As part of the landmark Country Road + NGV First Nations Commissions, eight emerging First Nations artists will present ambitious new work in the exhibition My Country, opening 22 March 2024 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. 

Unique in the Australian cultural landscape, the Country Road + NGV First Nations Commissions is a national mentorship program and exhibition series that invites an artist from every state and territory to produce a significant new work under the guidance with an esteemed mentor. Reflecting the scope of the initiative, outcomes range across a diversity of media, including textiles, customary cultural objects and large-scale paintings to installations that engage glass making and new modes of fabrication. 

The Country Road + NGV First Nations Commissions pairs eight emerging Australian First Nations artists with esteemed industry mentors. Invited by the NGV to participate in the commission, the mentors nominated an emerging artist for the year-long mentorship opportunity which includes guidance through the conception, creation and delivery of a major work that in its first iteration responds to the theme ‘My Country’. 

Working out of Iwantja Arts in Indulkana, South Australia, Alec Baker and Eric Barney have produced two large collaborative paintings, titled Ngura (Country), that are as rich in their hues of red, pink, orange and yellow as they are in their embodiment of sacred stories and customs. . The artists are mentored by 2019 Ramsay Art Prize winner and the first Indigenous artist to be awarded the Archibald Prize, Vincent Namatjira OAM.

Tiwi artist Johnathon World Peace Bush, also widely known as Jon Jon, has produced a body of work that tells of Tiwi culture, storytelling and history. Mentored by his cousin Pedro Wonaeamirri, their shared ancestry and Country are at the heart of this mentorship. 

Jan Baljagil Gunjaka Griffiths’s work Tree of knowledge, which depicts the native gerdewoon (boab tree), is made of ceramic hand-painted boab nuts, a four-metre-high ochre on paper painting of a gerdewoon and a soundscape of Griffith’s poetry. The work honours the personal and cultural significance of the gerdewoon as a source of food, water, cultural stories and as a historical site. Griffiths has been mentored by her mother and senior artist Peggy Griffiths, both are Miriwoong women from Kununurra in the East Kimberley, Western Australia working out of Waringarri Arts. 

For Canberra-based artist and Walgalu and Wiradjuri man Aidan Hartshorn the commission was an opportunity to pursue new mediums in his practice and build upon his ongoing Masters research into the impact of the Snowy Mountains Scheme on Walgalu Country. Mentored by Nunga (Kaurna Miyurna) and Māori (Te Arawa) man James Tylor, Hartshorn has created an installation comprised of sixteen individual diamond-shaped glass shields reflecting traditional Wiradjuri bark shields – each representing one of the dams of the Snowy Hydro.

Gamilaroi weaver and textile artist Sophie Honess has produced three woven rugs titled Daruka – grass, water, granite. Over 86,000 wool knots make up Honess’s work which represents Daruka, a site of great significance for the artist and her community located on Gamilaroi Country (Tamworth, New South Wales). The rugs each reflect different environmental features of Daruka – the grasses, creek beds and sand. For the commission, Honess was mentored by Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi man and contemporary artist, Jonathan Jones.

Boonwurrung and Barkindji man, Mitch Mahoney has created two bark canoes, a red gum canoe and a river reed canoe, and was guided through proper cultural processes and protocols by Barkindji artist David Doyle including learning collecting bark for the canoe and healing the tree with mud. Focusing on cultural revitalisation, the artist has also made a possum skin cloak honouring his mother’s culture which he learned over years working with his mentor and aunt Mutti Mutti, Yorta Yorta and Boonwurrung / Wemba Wemba woman Maree Clarke. 

Cheryl Rose, a Pataway-based (Burnie, Tasmania) multimedia artist, explores the fragmented stories of her Country, culture and community through a wall-based installation titled Fragments. The work incorporates an audiovisual component, developed with digital artist Darryl Rogers, evoking sounds and atmosphere around Pinmatik. Rose has been mentored by Denise Robinson who she has worked on projects with for 15 years, and both are descendants of the Trawlwoolway people.

Brisbane-based Kamilaroi man Warraba Weatherall is mentored by Girramay/ Yidinji / Kuku Yalanji man Tony Albert. His new work builds on his PhD research into the impact of systems of colonial bureaucracy and linguicide on contemporary society. For the commission Weatherall has fabricated a custom polyphon (a large disc-operated music player) which plays a musical composition created by translating oppressive archival documents into braille. Titled Dirge the steel polyphon implicates the body through sound, and questions why invisible colonial systems and forms, such as monuments, are reflexively accepted.

The Country Road + NGV First Nations Commissions: My Country will be on display 22 March – 4 August 2024 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Fed Square, Melbourne. For further information, please visit the NGV website: NGV.MELBOURNE