Fraser Island News
Pushing the boundaries for Red Ochre Me
Last Update: Wednesday, August 6, 2003.
QCA Gallery is hosting a public exhibition of new and challenging works by Fiona Foley, one of Australia’s pre-eminent Indigenous contemporary artists.
The exhibition will feature a work recently seen at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, a piece donated to the Griffith University Collection and new works investigating race relations and sexual politics of the Queensland “frontier” early last century.
Exhibition curator and Griffith Artworks Director Simon Wright said Foley was interested in the use of art as a vehicle to confront cliched conventions of exoticism and Aboriginality via interrogation of archives, collective memory and her identity as a descendant of Badtjala people from K’gari (Fraser Island, Queensland).
The result was a series of works set to challenge and resonate with viewers.
“New writing on Foley’s work by respected researcher and writer Associate Professor Anna Haebich of Griffith University, a recent recipient of an ARC fellowship, has been commissioned especially for the exhibition,” Mr Wright said.
“In her essay Charmed Circles: fact, fantasy and fraud on Australian Frontiers, Associate Professor Haebich makes clear and incisive advances into recent debates on sex, death, massacre and denial during the colonisation of Australia.”
In conjunction with the exhibition, Mr Wright has worked with Foley to present professional development opportunities for Indigenous artists in Queensland College of Art Griffith University’s Bachelor of Visual Arts in Contemporary Australian Indigenous Art (BoVACAIA).
“During a series of talks and hands-on experience, BoVACAIA students will gain an insight into QCA Gallery exhibition development and installation processes and work with the artist to create a major new floor work titled Massacre Site,” Mr Wright said.
Red Ochre Me, suitable for mature audiences only, will be at QCA Gallery at Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, South Bank, until September 14. Opening hours: Wed-Fri 11am-4pm and Sat-Sun noon-4pm. Ph: (07) 3875 3140.
The exhibition was officially opened on August 1 by Matt Foley, Minister for Employment, Training and Youth and Minister for the Arts, with a welcome by Boni Robertson, director of the Gumurrii Centre at Griffith University.
