On Fire
Climate and Crisis
30 January–20 March 202130 Jan–20 Mar 2021
#onfire
On Fire: Climate and Crisis profiles contemporary Queensland art in a time of significant ecological change. It situates this analysis during the emergence of what fire historian Stephen Pyne describes as the Pyrocene—the fire equivalent of an ice age, with Australia as one of its major epicentres.
One year on from Black Summer, the devastating 2019–20 bushfire season, the work of fifteen emerging, established, and posthumous artists frame an understanding of this theory of a new, incendiary era, and engage with closely related themes of global warming and climate threat in this state.
Queensland is synonymous with its climate, its identity and culture frequently foregrounded by it. This has previously been described ambivalently: as an extreme, sweat-inducing, clime, yet also an idyllic, even benign, paradise. This exhibition pronounces instead a changing image: of increasingly precarious conditions within the Pyrocene.
On Fire: Climate and Crisis looks to the past, present, and future terrain of this situation, considering the damaging legacies of colonialism, how artists visualise experiences of connection and disconnection with the environment, and fire’s capacity for rejuvenation in keeping with the Indigenous cultural fire movement.
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This project is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland and by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
Artist BiosGordon Bennett
Gordon Bennett (1955–2014) was born in Monto, and lived in Brisbane. His work examines historical and contemporary constructions of personal and cultural identity. His thirty-year career saw him achieve significant national and international recognition. His work featured in the 2014 Berlin Biennale and Documenta 13, Kassel, in 2012. Major solo shows include Unfinished Business: The Art of Gordon Bennett, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2020; Gordon Bennett, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; and Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, 2007; and History and Memory in the Art of Gordon Bennett, Brisbane City Gallery; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol; and Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo, 1999. His work is in most major public collections in Australia, and Tate, London.
Naomi Blacklock
Naomi Blacklock (b.1990) is a Brisbane-based artist whose practice maps the nexus of embodied performance, culture heritage, and gender identity. Her work examines the mythologies, archetypes, and harmful histories of gender and cultural identity. Her ritualised sound objects and performances amplify the body and the voice through performative bodily precision and screaming. Her work has been presented at Dark Mofo, Hobart; Museum of Brisbane; UQ Art Museum, Brisbane; Firstdraft, Sydney; and Seventh Gallery, Melbourne. She is Co-Director of Boxcopy, Brisbane, and a founding member of Clutch Collective.
Naomi Blacklock (b.1990) is a Brisbane-based artist whose practice maps the nexus of embodied performance, culture heritage, and gender identity. Her work examines the mythologies, archetypes, and harmful histories of gender and cultural identity. Her ritualised sound objects and performances amplify the body and the voice through performative bodily precision and screaming. Her work has been presented at Dark Mofo, Hobart; Museum of Brisbane; UQ Art Museum, Brisbane; Firstdraft, Sydney; and Seventh Gallery, Melbourne. She is Co-Director of Boxcopy, Brisbane, and a founding member of Clutch Collective.
Naomi Blacklock
Paul Bong
Paul Bong (b.1963) is a Cairns based descendant of the Yidinji people, occupants of the rainforest country stretching from Cairns in the north to Babinda in the south to the Atherton Tablelands in the west. He grew up around the Yattee area near Wright Creek in Far North Queensland. He is driven to regain the stories and culture lost to European settlement and share them through his art. His grandmother, who spoke Yidiny, taught him stories about the tropic Country, which inspired for many of his works. His work is in public collections, including the National Museum of Australia and Parliament House, Canberra. He has exhibited in Spoken, State Library of Queensland, Brisbane, 2020; Megalo International Print Prize, Megalo Gallery, Canberra, 2020; Artnow FNQ, Cairns Art Gallery, 2019; and Murrifactive Shield Studies, FireWorks Gallery, Brisbane, 2016.
Hannah Brontë
Hannah Brontë lives on Yugambeh country. Her work explores the female experience: young women’s and mother’s journeys and spiritual connections. Her journey of self discovery and the tangled layers of the human experience drive her to create dreamscapes exploring what could be. She embraces multiple mediums, including video, textiles, and soundscapes. In addition to being an artist, she is a DJ, is mother of Fempre$$, and is training to be a birthing doula. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, including in NGV Triennial, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2020; Tellus Terra, Sydney Opera House, 2020; Transits and Returns, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2019; The National: New Australian Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, 2019; Perilous Bodies, Ford Foundation, New York, 2019; Next Matriarch, ACE Open, Adelaide, 2017; and Red Green Blue: A History of Australian Video Art, Griffith University Art Museum, Brisbane, 2016.
Hannah Brontë lives on Yugambeh country. Her work explores the female experience: young women’s and mother’s journeys and spiritual connections. Her journey of self discovery and the tangled layers of the human experience drive her to create dreamscapes exploring what could be. She embraces multiple mediums, including video, textiles, and soundscapes. In addition to being an artist, she is a DJ, is mother of Fempre$$, and is training to be a birthing doula. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, including in NGV Triennial, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2020; Tellus Terra, Sydney Opera House, 2020; Transits and Returns, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2019; The National: New Australian Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, 2019; Perilous Bodies, Ford Foundation, New York, 2019; Next Matriarch, ACE Open, Adelaide, 2017; and Red Green Blue: A History of Australian Video Art, Griffith University Art Museum, Brisbane, 2016.
Hannah Brontë
Michael Candy
Michael Candy (b.1990) is a Gold Coast–based artist whose work uses robotics, hardware hacking, and video to explores the liminal realm that technology oppresses on the physical world. His installations and projects often emerge as social experiments or ecological interventions in public spaces. Recent exhibitions include the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Monster Theatres, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2020; Water, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2019; and 2017 Kathmandu Triennale. He has exhibited at Pratt Manhattan Gallery, New York; the Forum of Sensory Motion, Athens; the Instrument Builders Project and Hackteria Lab, Yogyakarta; and in Hawapi in Huepetuhe.
Kinly Grey
Kinly Grey (b.1990) makes site-specific installations that imagine ways to understand the world through sensory experience and poetics. Working in galleries and public spaces, they have held solo exhibitions at Metro Arts, Outer Space, and Boxcopy, in Brisbane, and The Walls, on the Gold Coast. Their work has featured at HOTA Home of the Arts, Gold Coast; Brisbane Festival; Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane; Byron School of Arts, Mullumbimby; Queen Street Mall, Brisbane; Enoggera Reservoir, Brisbane; and Highgate Hill Park, Brisbane. They are based in Brisbane.
Kinly Grey (b.1990) makes site-specific installations that imagine ways to understand the world through sensory experience and poetics. Working in galleries and public spaces, they have held solo exhibitions at Metro Arts, Outer Space, and Boxcopy, in Brisbane, and The Walls, on the Gold Coast. Their work has featured at HOTA Home of the Arts, Gold Coast; Brisbane Festival; Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane; Byron School of Arts, Mullumbimby; Queen Street Mall, Brisbane; Enoggera Reservoir, Brisbane; and Highgate Hill Park, Brisbane. They are based in Brisbane.
Kinly Grey
Dale Harding
Dale Harding (b.1982) is a descendant of the Bidjara, Garingbal, and Ghungalu peoples of Central Queensland and a Brisbane-based artist. Harding explores the visual and social languages of his communities, drawing on and maintaining the spiritual and philosophical sensibilities of his cultural inheritance within the framework of contemporary art internationally. Harding’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, in 2019; Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, in 2015 and 2019; and Milani Gallery, Brisbane, from 2016 to 2019. Group exhibitions include Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, 2020; PAC Milano, 2019; 2019 Lyon Biennial; Sharjah Art Foundation, 2019; Museum of Brisbane, 2019; Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm, 2018; 2018 Liverpool Biennial; and 2018 TarraWarra Biennial. In 2019, Harding was awarded a Doctorate of Visual Arts from Griffith University.
Tracey Moffatt
Tracey Moffatt (b.1960) is a visual storyteller, who has worked in photography and film for over three decades. Brisbane-born, Sydney-based, she is one of Australia’s most celebrated artists, . Her work is often self-referential, exploring her childhood memories, and broader issues of race, gender, sexuality, and identity. She has had over 100 solo exhibitions. Highlights include My Horizon, the Australian Pavilion for the 2017 Venice Biennale; a retrospective film programme at Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2012; a retrospective at Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2003; and shows at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Brooklyn Museum, New York, both 2007; and at Dia Center for the Arts, New York, 1997. Her work also featured in the 1998 Sao Paulo Biennial, 1997 Venice Biennale; 1995 Gwangju Biennale, and 2008, 2000, 1996, and 1993 Sydney Biennales. In 2007, she received the Infinity Award for art photography at the International Center of Photography, New York. Her short film Night Cries was selected for the official competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 1990, and Bedevil, her first feature film, in 1993.
Tracey Moffatt (b.1960) is a visual storyteller, who has worked in photography and film for over three decades. Brisbane-born, Sydney-based, she is one of Australia’s most celebrated artists, . Her work is often self-referential, exploring her childhood memories, and broader issues of race, gender, sexuality, and identity. She has had over 100 solo exhibitions. Highlights include My Horizon, the Australian Pavilion for the 2017 Venice Biennale; a retrospective film programme at Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2012; a retrospective at Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2003; and shows at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Brooklyn Museum, New York, both 2007; and at Dia Center for the Arts, New York, 1997. Her work also featured in the 1998 Sao Paulo Biennial, 1997 Venice Biennale; 1995 Gwangju Biennale, and 2008, 2000, 1996, and 1993 Sydney Biennales. In 2007, she received the Infinity Award for art photography at the International Center of Photography, New York. Her short film Night Cries was selected for the official competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 1990, and Bedevil, her first feature film, in 1993.
Tracey Moffatt
Erika Scott
Erika Scott (b.1987) is a Brisbane-based artist who works in sculpture and installation. She modifies discarded household objects, furniture, and popular-culture debris, resulting in a maximalist and often overwhelming DIY bricolage. Her environments and constructions generate an unsettling ambivalence, part attraction and repulsion, anxiety and relaxation. Her solo exhibitions include The Dutch Aquarium, Outer Space, Brisbane, 2020; and The Barnacle Lovers, Wreckers ARI, Brisbane, 2017. She is founding director of the ARI The Soylent Spot and workshop and residency coordinator for Sculptors Queensland.
Madonna Staunton
Madonna Staunton (1938–2019) was an artist and poet who lived in Brisbane. Early in her life, Staunton was encouraged to make art by her mother, who was also a painter and poet of repute. In the mid-1970s, she abandoned her initial focus on abstract painting for collage and assemblage. In 2014, Queensland Art Gallery presented a retrospective of her work, Out of a Clear Blue Sky. Her work is in public collections, including National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; Artbank, Sydney; Bendigo Art Gallery; Griffith University, Brisbane; UQ Art Museum, Brisbane; QUT Art Museum, Brisbane; Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane; and Parliament House, Canberra.
Madonna Staunton (1938–2019) was an artist and poet who lived in Brisbane. Early in her life, Staunton was encouraged to make art by her mother, who was also a painter and poet of repute. In the mid-1970s, she abandoned her initial focus on abstract painting for collage and assemblage. In 2014, Queensland Art Gallery presented a retrospective of her work, Out of a Clear Blue Sky. Her work is in public collections, including National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; Artbank, Sydney; Bendigo Art Gallery; Griffith University, Brisbane; UQ Art Museum, Brisbane; QUT Art Museum, Brisbane; Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane; and Parliament House, Canberra.
Madonna Staunton
Anne Wallace
Anne Wallace (b.1970) is a Brisbane-born, Melbourne-based painter. She studied at Queensland University of Technology from 1988 to 1990, before travelling to the UK in 1994, to complete her Master of Arts at the Slade School, London, with the assistance of an Anne and Gordon Samstag International Visual Art Scholarship. She combines familiar and unfamiliar subject matter to reflect on the disquieting qualities of everyday life. Her work is in major public collections and has been exhibited widely, including in the touring solo exhibition Strange Ways, QUT Art Museum, Brisbane; Art Gallery of Ballarat; and Samstag Museum of Art, Adelaide, 2020. Her work was also in Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2020; Plain Sight, Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney, 2019; New Woman, Museum of Brisbane, 2019; Anne Wallace: Recent Paintings, Neon Parc, Melbourne, 2017; Narratives, Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide, 2016; and Lurid Beauty, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2015.
Judy Watson
Judy Watson (b. 1959) was born in Mundubbera, and lives in Brisbane. Her Aboriginal matrilineal family are from Waanyi country in north-west Queensland. She works from sites, archives, and memories to uncover Indigenous histories, following lines of emotional and physical topography that centre on particular places and moments. Major solo shows include Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, 2020, and Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2018. Her work is held in public collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, and all Australian state art museums; Tate, London; Taipei Fine Arts Museum; St Louis Art Museum; British Museum, London; Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge; Library of Congress, Washington DC; and Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, University of Virginia.
Judy Watson (b. 1959) was born in Mundubbera, and lives in Brisbane. Her Aboriginal matrilineal family are from Waanyi country in north-west Queensland. She works from sites, archives, and memories to uncover Indigenous histories, following lines of emotional and physical topography that centre on particular places and moments. Major solo shows include Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, 2020, and Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2018. Her work is held in public collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, and all Australian state art museums; Tate, London; Taipei Fine Arts Museum; St Louis Art Museum; British Museum, London; Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge; Library of Congress, Washington DC; and Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, University of Virginia.
Judy Watson
Warraba Weatherall
Warraba Weatherall (b.1987) is a Brisbane-based installation and street artist from the Kamilaroi Nation of south-west Queensland. He is interested in the life of cultural objects and histories within archives. His work addresses legacies of colonisation, where social, economic, and political realities have validated Eurocentric ideologies. His exhibitions include Datum, Milani Gallery Carpark, Brisbane, 2019; While You Were Sleeping, Ambush Gallery, Canberra, 2019; InstitutionaLies, Metro Arts, Brisbane, 2017; and National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards, Museum and Art Gallery Northern Territory, Darwin, 2017.
Tintin Wulia
Tintin Wulia (b.1972) is Denpasar-born, but Brisbane-based. Initially trained as a film composer and architectural engineer, she works with video, installation, drawing, painting, sound, dance, text, performance, and public intervention. Her works—particularly those on borders—are often participatory. She represented Indonesia at the 2017 Venice Biennale. She also exhibited in the 2005 Istanbul Biennale, 2011 Moscow Biennale, and 2013 Sharjah Biennale. Her work is in the collections of He Xiangning Art Gallery, Shenzhen, and Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. Her 2018 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship looked at mosquitoes. Since completing her PhD at RMIT, Melbourne, in 2014, she has been an Australia Council for the Arts’ Creative Australia Fellow (2014–16) and Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Gothenburg (2018–20), where she is now Principal Investigator of the Swedish Research Council-funded Protocols of Killings: 1965, Distance, and the Ethics of Future Warfare (2021–3).
Tintin Wulia (b.1972) is Denpasar-born, but Brisbane-based. Initially trained as a film composer and architectural engineer, she works with video, installation, drawing, painting, sound, dance, text, performance, and public intervention. Her works—particularly those on borders—are often participatory. She represented Indonesia at the 2017 Venice Biennale. She also exhibited in the 2005 Istanbul Biennale, 2011 Moscow Biennale, and 2013 Sharjah Biennale. Her work is in the collections of He Xiangning Art Gallery, Shenzhen, and Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. Her 2018 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship looked at mosquitoes. Since completing her PhD at RMIT, Melbourne, in 2014, she has been an Australia Council for the Arts’ Creative Australia Fellow (2014–16) and Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Gothenburg (2018–20), where she is now Principal Investigator of the Swedish Research Council-funded Protocols of Killings: 1965, Distance, and the Ethics of Future Warfare (2021–3).
Tintin Wulia
Jemima Wyman
Jemima Wyman (b.1977) is a Brisbane and Los Angeles–based artist whose practice encompasses performance, video, installation, photography, and painting. Her work focuses on the use of patterns and masks in visual resistance, particularly camouflage as a formal, social, and political strategy in negotiating identity. She has exhibited widely in Australia and internationally. She has had solo shows at Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney, in 2019 and 2017; Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles, in 2018 and 2015; and Milani Gallery, Brisbane, 2015. She has participated in group shows at Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto, 2020; Transfer, New York, 2019; HeK, Basel, 2019; Chronus Art Center, Shanghai, 2019; La Gaîté Lyrique, Paris, 2019; ZKM, Karlsruhe, 2018; and City Gallery Wellington, 2018. Her work has been collected by the Whitney Museum, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; and the 21st Century Museum of Art, Kanazawa.
Curator BioTim Riley Walsh is a Brisbane-based curator and art historian. He is Australia Desk Editor for Art Asia Pacific, and a Post-Thesis Fellow in the School of Communication and Arts, University of Queensland. He is Co-Editor of Gordon Bennett: Selected Writings and has written widely for Art Asia Pacific, Frieze, Art Monthly Australasia, Art and Australia, Eyeline, Apollo, Runway, and Artlink. He has worked in gallery management, communications, and programming roles at Milani Gallery, Brisbane; Camden Arts Centre, London; and Queensland Art Gallery.
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