To hear about the outdoor exhibition from the curator, select the ‘Audio’ button below. Select the ‘Stop’ button with the musical note to stop the audio.

For the location of the next artwork in the tour by Hannah Bronte, please see the directions at the bottom of this page.

Welcome To Maiwar

AN INTERVIEW WITH THE CURATOR

Hello, I’m Freja Carmichael, I’m a descendent of the Ngugi people from Quandamooka waters, so that’s Minjerriba, Stradbroke Island, and Morton Island, Moorgumpin. And I am one of the curators of the Maiwar exhibition alongside Amanda Hayman, and Katina Davidson. We’re part of the Blaklashes Collective, and welcome to the Maiwar exhibition.

The Blaklashes are a newly established collective developed out of a long standing working relationship and an identified need for culturally appropriate representation in the consultation, development and delivery of creative projects involving Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander artists. This is our first opportunity to come together, and bring all of our different skill sets together.

The curatorial vision of Maiwar was to celebrate Brisbane’s unique, contemporary indigenous arts culture by bringing together emerging and established visual artists with a strong connection to Brisbane. So we used the Brisbane River as a metaphor, as a way of representing the strong sense of community and collaborative working practices.

A droplet of water can be significant, but susceptible to absorption or evaporation. Whereas many drops together can join to form springs, streams, lakes and river systems. Maiwar, or the Brisbane River, is the central waterway for Brisbane connecting surrounding areas and people. The short-listed artists for Maiwar are making ripples and waves within the arts sector. The artists were chosen because of their leadership within their practices and their commitment to the arts community. They’re diverse in terms of the stages of their careers, age and gender, but they also represent a myriad of subjects within their artwork.

Each work is strong in their own right, telling an important story and collectively they represent a montage of strong narratives telling the current landscape of Brisbane’s society, politics, culture and environment. All artists are from, or have resided in and around Brisbane and maintain a strong connection to their families, hometown and culture. They reflect and celebrate Brisbane’s unique contemporary indigenous arts culture and just as the river systems, their collective contributions has the tidal force to filter into the public domain.

We really wanted to get across this nurturing and supportive environment of Brisbane’s indigenous arts sector. So some of these artists have, may no longer be residing in Brisbane but they come and go and just leave their footprints and a legacy that’s always welcomed when they come home. When we were selecting artists for Maiwar, based on our rational as well, we were looking for artists who had resided in Brisbane within their life time. Also we were also looking for gender equality, male and female, and then the strong leadership that, this could be through their own practice, locally or nationally. And also there was the artwork suitability. There was site specific considerations with the projections, red was mentioned to us that, red was quite a stronger colour for the projections whereas blue might fade against the water on the bridges.

We had quite a number of options for each of the artists and we really did look to a site specific works. Like, we selected, recommended Judy Watson’s work for the Museum of Brisbane due to her practice really focused on uncovering the histories of Aboriginal people, which often works closely with museum collections. So we were really focusing on our rational. So one artist is strong but when they come together it is this collaborative movement.

To continue the tour and view the next artwork by Hannah Brontë, make your way to King George Square and to the entrance of the King George Square Carpark on Adelaide Street. Enter the carpark via the pedestrian walk on the right and follow the Vibrant Laneways signs to the right. Then, when safe, cross the carpark on your left to the vibrant spray-painted walls where the artworks reside. 

Once you reach the artwork, click this link.