This NAIDOC Week join us at PICA for an evening of storytelling, artist talks and audience discussion about art practice, culture and Country. With a Welcome to Country presented by Vaughn McGuire, Hatched 2021 exhibiting artist Bradley Kickett (Nyoongar) and performance artists in residence Joshua Pether (Kalkadoon), Helah Milroy (Palyku) and Janine Oxenham (Malgana Yamatji) will be having a conversation about their art practices. Facilitated by Carly Lane, this opportunity to hear from First Nations artists currently presenting or developing creative works at PICA provides valuable insight into their practice and sparks conversation around the 2021 NAIDOC theme, ‘Healing Country’.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Carly Lane is a Murri woman from Queensland, Australia. She is an independent curator and a senior research officer at Culture and the Arts – DLGSC (Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries). She uses her research and curating to enable Aboriginal self-determination, equality, and social change. Three shows dear to her curatorial-heart include Balancing Act (2021), Desert River Sea: Portraits of the Kimberley (2019) and Everyone has a history: Plain Speak (2017) which she curated for the Art Gallery of Western Australia. DRS was particularly fun and important for its model of co-curation with Emilia Galatis and an alliance of Aboriginal curators from the Kimberley region. In 2012, she also guest curated the Second National Indigenous Art Triennial (National Gallery of Australia, 2012). Carly finds inspiration in political art and any art (really) where the artist speaks their political, social and cultural truth.
Bradley Kickett is a Noongar artist descended from the Kickett clan in York, Western Australia. He began painting in 2007. Bradley’s art pieces are influenced by experiencing Noongar country, from the oceans to the rivers and seeing the wildflowers and the land from the air and showing the flow and the shapes of the earth. These images are all interwoven with the history and the stories that are shared and passed down to him from his family and elders.
Joshua Pether is of Kalkadoon heritage and lives and works on Noongar country WA. He is an experimental performance artist and choreographer of movement, temporary ritual and imagined realities. His practice is influenced by his two cultural histories – Indigeneity and disability and how the two intersect and meet each other. As an independent artist he has performed both nationally and internationally with a career highlight of performing at PS122 in New York.
Helah Milroy is a Palyku woman (East Pilbara), living in the Fremantle region of Western Australia. Her artwork/performance utilizes Feminist and First Nations methodologies and epistemologies to explore an interest in existential philosophy and theology. In particular, the relationship between human and non-human worlds.
Janine Oxenham is a Malgana Yamatji woman from the Shark Bay area in WA. She has studied dance at both NAISDA college, NSW and WAAPA, WA. She has choreographed and performed as a freelance contemporary Indigenous dancer for numerous festivals and most reecently performed in the Yirra Yaakin 2021 Perth Festival production of The Sum of Us.
