Warraba Weatherall’s installations explore archival structures, analysing cultural histories’ existence within institutional repositories. His new work To Know and Possess, commissioned for On Fire: Climate and Crisis, draws on his research into Kamilaroi cultural materials in Australian collections and their accompanying systems of categorisation. The work is a response to these collections, where ‘preservation’ and restricted access to cultural materials contribute to the breakdown of cultural knowledge and practice. Weatherall proposes that these normalised processes mark a point of death, where these objects are valued as data over their cultural use within communities. Writing and Concepts is a lecture and performance series exploring the insights writers and artists have into their own practices.
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Warraba Weatherall is a Meanjin/Brisbane-based installation and street artist from the Kamilaroi Nation of south-west Queensland. He is interested in the lives of cultural objects in archives. His work critiques the legacies of colonisation, where social, economic, and political realities perpetually validate Eurocentric ideologies. Drawing on personal experience and cultural knowledge, he contributes to cross-cultural dialogue by offering alternate ways of understanding.
Tim Riley Walsh is a Meanjin/Brisbane-based curator and art historian. He is Australia-Desk Editor for Art Asia Pacific, Hong Kong, 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 for Frieze, Art Monthly Australasia, Art and Australia, Eyeline, Apollo, Runway, and Artlink. He previously worked in gallery management, comms, and program roles at Milani Gallery, Meanjin/Brisbane; Camden Arts Centre, London; and Queensland Art Gallery, Meanjin/Brisbane.
Warraba Weatherall 'To Know and Possess' 2021.
