Fraser Island News

Invisible Voices

Last Update: Tuesday, July 2, 2002. 2:31pm (AEDT)

Invisible Voices

A survey exhibition of work by Hervey Bay-based Fiona Foley is showing audiences the strength of one of Queensland’s most important Indigenous artists.

Invisible Voices: Works by Fiona Foley is a Bundaberg Arts Centre Travelling Exhibition that will be seen by audiences in Cairns from July 10 to 29.

“Fiona Foley is one of Australia’s foremost contemporary indigenous artists of our time,” says exhibition curator Joan Winter. “She is little known, however, in her home state of Queensland outside of the capital city.”

The exhibition places Fiona’s most recent work in the context of her seventeen-year career as an exhibiting artist with sixteen works from the period between 1987 and 1997 shown with seven works created specifically for the exhibition.

Fiona Foley has been a curator, public speaker, community activist and writer as well as an exhibiting artist for the past seventeen years. Her works have continually borne witness to the history of her people, the Badtjala and their ancestral homeland, Fraser Island.

“Living in one’s own traditional country gives you a grounding that encompasses a past and a contemporary context for my generation of Badtjala,” says Fiona Foley. “We are players in the mainstream which encompasses the arts, as claimants for native title, as spokespeople through the development of tourism, land management, health, education and employment.”

“In an ever increasing way, our voices, our aesthetic, which articulates Australia, is being sought out internationally.”

The exhibition will be seen at The Tanks Arts Centre, Cairns from July 10 to 29, 2002.

A public lecture called “Many Rivers to Cross “ will be presented by Fiona Foley on Thursday July 11 at 4pm in the Gallery. Bookings are essential.

The Gallery is open to the public Monday to Friday from 11am to 4pm or by appointment.