Please join Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art’s Curator of Indigenous Art Bruce McLean, for an in-conversation with Brisbane-based artist Vernon Ah Kee, on Thursday, 16 June, at 6pm. McLean has worked with Ah Kee on a number of occasions, including My Country, I Still Call Australia Home: Contemporary Art from Black Australia (2013) at QAGOMA. For this in-conversation, they will discuss Ah Kee’s practice, engaging specifically with his new work for Imaginary Accord.
Ah Kee’s conceptual text pieces, videos, photographs and drawings form a critique of Australian culture from the perspective of the Aboriginal experience of contemporary life. His work was exhibited in the 2008 Sydney Biennale, and in other major shows around Australia and internationally. He represented Australia in Once Removed at the 53rd Venice Biennale 2009. Recent exhibitions include Ideas of Barack, 2011, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Tall Man at Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne in 2011, the Indigenous Triennale National Gallery of Australia and Everything Falls Apart at Artspace in 2012. In 2013 he exhibited in Sakahan at the National Gallery of Canada. In 2014, Ah Kee was awarded the Redlands Konica Minolta Art Prize, as well as being announced as a Sidney Myer Creative Fellow. In 2015 he will exhibit a new body of work at the Istanbul Biennial, curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev.
McLean is a member of the Wierdi people of the Birri Gubba Nation of Wribpid, Central Queensland. McLean has curated exhibitions for QAGOMA including, and has been a part of the curatorial team for the Asia Pacific Triennial and Contemporary Australia series. He is co-curator of the upcoming exhibition GOMA Q: Contemporary Queensland Art.
