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Djon Mundine
Always Was Always Will Be | 2024
Always Was Always Will Be. @ North East Wiradjuri Cultural Centre
A red ochre life size body print on the inside striped wall of Kandos Aboriginal Centre Traditional Indigenous people have left hand prints and/or stencils in red ochre to record their presence all over the Australian continent including cave walls in the Sydney Basin itself. This full body is a statement of prior un-ceded ownership and to remember those large numbers of innocent men women and children murdered in the killings of the colonial wars.
bio:
Djon Mundine is a charismatic art curator, writer, speaker, and activist from the Bandjalung nation of the Australian east coast. He is of Aboriginal (Bandjalung) and Irish (County Cork) descent. He is also connected with the Yolngu (Aboriginal) communities of Milingimbi, Maningrida, and Ramingining of central Arnhem Land through working there for 16 (sixteen) years through the 1980s, 1990s, and into the 21stcentury. He has held senior curatorial positions at state and national institutions (AGNSW, MCA, QAG, NAM); the Kunstsammlung Norhreinwesphalen (Dusseldorf), Heyward Gallery (London), Louisiana Museum (Denmark), and collaborated with the NGA on major international exhibitions such as The World of Dreaming, at the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia. Djon is a seminal figure in the critical writing on Australia’s First Peoples cultural expression, including Ngadhu-Ngulili-Ngeaninyagu: I-We-Us. A Personal History of Aboriginal Art in the Premier State, Campbelltown Arts Centre. Djon recently supported Kamilaroi/Bigambul artist Archie Moore’s Golden Lion winning first for Australia, Kith and Kin; 2024’s Venice Biennale.
statement:
At the 2015 Cementa Festival I worked with over 80 desendants of survivors of the 1820s Dabee massacre; Jimmy and Peggy Lambert, painting a memorial mural on the external wall of the Kandos Museum that will be added to every festival. For the Dingo Project (2022) Ngunungula Art Gallery, (Bowral) and Hervey Bay Art Gallery I performed an In Conversation With My Grandmother (a Tanami Desert cross-bred Dingo) and left a permanent red ochre body self-print; Always Was, Always Will Be. In 2023, I performed a short poetry performance in homage to Caribbean poet Eduard Glissant, as part of Daniel Boyd’s Rainbow Serpent exhibition at the Gropius Bahr, Berlin.
North East Wiradjuri Cultural Centre
The Dabee Family Choir Mural Project | 2022
The Dabee Family Choir Mural Project. @ Kandos Museum
This community project originated from the Jimmy and Peggy Lambert Memorial Mural on the entrance wall of Kandos Museum in 2015. Jimmy and Peggy Lambert were survivors of the Dabee Massacre, 1823. Led by artist Djon Mundine, their images were ‘finger’ painted by over 60 descendants – as a form of ‘haptic specificity’ – that is, by touching the images with their hands instead of using brushes, they touched their great-grandparents, stroked and groomed them, and left their fingerprints and DNA on them. Artist-poet Peter Swain with Djon Mundine will collaborate with local Dabee descendants to add the next generation, their children’s images, to the mural. They will sing through their fingerprints. Thank you to Kandos Museum. At 4pm Saturday 21 May, Uncle Peter Swain and Djon Mundine will do a special one-off poetry reading at the site.
bio:
Djon Mundine OAM is a proud Bandjalung man from the Northern Rivers of New South Wales. Mundine is a curator, writer, artist and activist and is celebrated as a foundational figure in the criticism and exhibition of contemporary Aboriginal art. He has held many senior curatorial positions in both national and international institutions, some of which include the National Museum of Australia, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Art Gallery of New South Wales and Campbelltown Art Centre. Between 1979 and 1995, Mundine was the Art Advisor at Milingimbi and curator at Bula-bula Arts in Ramingining, Arnhem Land for 16 years. Mundine was also the concept artist/producer of the ‘Aboriginal Memorial’, comprising 200 painted poles by 43 artists from Ramingining, each symbolising a year since the 1788 British invasion. The memorial was central to the 1988 Biennale of Sydney and remains on permanent display at the National Gallery of Australia in the main entrance hall. In 1993, Mundine received the Medal of the Order of Australia for service to the promotion and development of Aboriginal arts, crafts and culture. Between 2005 & 2006 Mundine was resident at the National Museum of Ethnology (Minpaku) in Osaka, Japan as a Research Professor in the Department of Social Research and is a PhD candidate at National College of Art and Design, UNSW. Djon Mundine OAM also won The Australia Council’s 2020 Red Ochre Award for Lifetime Achievement and is currently an independent curator of contemporary Indigenous art and cultural mentor.
statement:
All art is a conversation. Art is a social act – it is about the people of a society, not just what is fashionable at the time. Art is also about memory, remembering family.
Gibir – Yinaa A Man – A Woman | 2015
Gibir – Yinaa A Man – A Woman. @
bio:
statement:
Based on original photographs, descendants of Jimmy Lambert (1830–1900) and Peggy Lambert (1830–1884) will ‘paint’ a thumbprint image on an exterior wall of the Kandos Museum. It is an opportunity to leave a permanent image or mark of the Aboriginal presence in the area in the explicit, identified way of named personalities.
