Un–Discipline

As a co-founder of the Brisbane-based Aboriginal art collective proppaNOW and longstanding political activist, Richard Bell has developed a distinct practice that confronts the social and cultural structures underpinning race relations in Australia. In the We're not series, created early in his career, Bell challenges the stereotypes and assumptions that have shaped perceptions of Aboriginal identity. Pairing blunt declarative statements with references to different nationalities, he exposes the absurdity of defining people through simplistic labels while highlighting the ways Indigenous peoples have been positioned as “other” within their own country. Characteristically direct and provocative, these works demonstrate Bell’s sharp use of language as a tool for political and cultural critique. They challenge the foundations of racism, colonial attitudes and institutional power.

Peter Japanangka Blacksmith was among the founding generation of artists associated with the Warlpiri art movement at Lajamanu in the Northern Territory, a movement defined by the translation of ancestral stories and cultural knowledge into contemporary forms. While best known for his paintings on canvas and board, Painted sandshoes demonstrates the artist's willingness to extend customary painting practices beyond conventional painting mediums. Applying hand-painted dotting and ceremonial designs to a pair of everyday canvas shoes, Blacksmith brings together Indigenous cultural expression and a mass-produced consumer object. The work reflects the adaptability and vitality of Aboriginal artistic traditions, and challenges the distinctions between art and everyday life.

The Blak Laundry is a performance-based collaboration between Dominique Chen and Libby Harward that reimagines galleries and public spaces as working laundromats. Their interventions provide a space to hold conversations about sovereignty, cultural labour, capitalism and everyday Blak life. The works shown here—It all comes out in the wash bub, Rager social fabric softener and Blak Laundry Rules—are material traces of these events, employing the visual language of household products, signage and agitprop to encourage public dialogue and collective reflection. Playful yet incisive, the collective's practice uses humour and participation to explore identity, community and care while celebrating Blak resilience, joy and self-determination.

Known for his meticulously staged photographic works, Michael Cook uses satire, role-play and speculative narratives to explore representations of Aboriginal identity in Australia. In Livin’ the Dream (BBQ), Cook reimagines one of Australia’s most familiar social rituals: the backyard barbecue. Part of his Livin’ the Dream series, the work explores the promises and contradictions of the so-called “Australian dream” of prosperity, belonging and social equality. Through carefully constructed imagery, in the style of a theatrical tableau vivant, Cook places Aboriginal people at the centre of narratives from which they have often been excluded. His imagery draws attention to the uneven distribution of wealth, received ideas of “civilisation”, and challenges dominant histories and national myths. Balancing humour with critical reflection, the photograph invites viewers to consider how ideas of home, community and success are shaped by the ongoing legacies of colonisation.

Selma Nunay Coulthard is known for depicting the landscapes and stories of her Country around Tempe Downs, west of Mparntwe (Alice Springs). In this work, she draws on the watercolour traditions of Central Australian Aboriginal art to create a vibrant portrayal of her ancestral Country painted directly onto a discarded road sign. The work brings together two contrasting visual languages: the warning symbols and directives of colonial intervention and infrastructure and the artist’s intimate knowledge of place. The layered landscape partially obscures the sign’s original messages, transforming an object associated with regulation and control into an affirmation of cultural connection and belonging. By reclaiming and reworking this everyday material, Coulthard asserts the enduring presence of Aboriginal knowledge and custodianship within a landscape marked by ongoing histories of occupation and change.

Destiny Deacon worked across photography, video, installation and textiles, using humour, satire and staged imagery to challenge stereotypes and expose the everyday realities of racism in Australia. In Fence sitters, two figures wearing white face masks are set against the Australian flag. Their drawn eyes, nostrils and open mouths create an unsettling image, drawing on the visual language of terrorism and fanaticism. By concealing individual identity, the masks compound the title of the work, where “sitting on the fence” describes political apathy or ambivalence. The stark whiteness of the masks also invites reflection on race, conformity and the performance of nationalism. Presented as a soft textile object associated with comfort and domestic life, the work brings these questions into the everyday. As Deacon provokes, ‘There is no excuse for ignorance, and you should make an effort to understand what happens in our world. How else can you be contemporary?’

Ali Cobby Eckermann is an acclaimed poet, writer and artist whose work reflects experiences of family separation, reconnection and enduring relationships with Country and culture.  

In Fish trap, she transforms reclaimed industrial wire into a sculptural form based on traditional fishing technologies used to gather food from rivers and waterways. By repurposing materials associated with the division and colonisation of the land, she reimagines an object grounded in sustainable relationships with Country and community. The work brings together cultural knowledge, resourcefulness and care for place, reflecting the importance of reconnecting with and sustaining ancestral traditions while speaking to the enduring strength of cultural practices passed between generations.

Gordon Hookey combines art and activism, using satire, humour and sharp political commentary in his multidisciplinary practice to challenge racism, colonial authority and historical injustice. In Bully Min Bin Luck Hup Habrid Jinny Plag, he employs caricature and symbolism to expose the violence of colonial power. A pig-headed, pistol-wielding police figure dominates the foreground, while grey steel bars rise through the composition, appearing to imprison the Aboriginal flag that glows behind them. Beyond the bars and the flag, ghostly human forms emerge from the darkness, suggesting ancestral presences that endure despite histories of dispossession and control. Characteristic of Hookey’s practice, the work combines visual wit with pointed social critique, confronting issues of policing, incarceration and the ongoing legacy of colonial oppression.

Danie Mellor is a multidisciplinary artist who explores Australia’s shared and contested histories through the lens of his First Nations ancestry and enduring connection to Country in the Atherton Tablelands and rainforests of far north Queensland. In How I wish you were here and In dreams the parting, he repurposes the lids of vintage travelling trunks, reshaping them into forms inspired by rainforest shields from his ancestral Country. The trunk—a recurring motif in Mellor’s practice in the early 2000s—evokes journeys, separation and the displacement of Aboriginal people from their homelands through the processes of colonisation. The weathered steel surfaces, marked by age and travel, also recall the formal Victorian identities adopted by Indigenous women in historical family photographs. This dialogue between movement and belonging, personal memory and cultural inheritance, is further enriched by rainforest traditions in which the shield is understood as a feminine object. Poetic and evocative, these sculptures reflect on the ways histories, identities and connections to Country are carried across generations despite distance and dislocation.

In Surveying the inheritance, Mellor reflects on the ways land has been measured, mapped and claimed through colonial systems of knowledge. The sparse composition is marked by faint topographical lines, traces of fencing and surveying marks, while a small boomerang hovers above the landscape. Suggesting both physical and symbolic acts of possession, these elements allude to the transformation of Country through exploration, settlement and regulation. The boomerang functions as a subtle counterpoint to these imposed systems, evoking enduring Aboriginal presence, knowledge and connection to place.  Rather than presenting Country as an empty space to be surveyed, Mellor reveals it as a layered cultural landscape shaped by competing histories and ways of understanding. The work invites reflection on inheritance — not only of land, but also of memory, responsibility and belonging.

Hayley Millar Baker works across photography, collage, film and video to interrogate autobiographical narratives and questions of identity. This photograph forms part of A Series of Unwarranted Events, a body of work that revisits colonial accounts of conflict on Gunditjmara Country. Depicting a stark landscape of volcanic stone walls and settler dwellings, the image references nineteenth-century records that labelled Aboriginal resistance as theft while overlooking the broader context of invasion and dispossession. Through her highly constructed, collaged black-and-white compositions, Baker exposes the biases embedded in historical language and documentation. The work invites viewers to consider whose stories have been recorded, whose have been omitted, and how acts of resistance are remembered and represented.

Nancy Naawi transforms discarded fishing nets and marine debris into intricately woven sculptural forms. Drawing on Torres Strait Islander weaving traditions, her practice brings together cultural knowledge, environmental advocacy and community-led responses to the impact of ocean pollution. Ghost-net vessel is constructed from recovered commercial fishing nets, known as "ghost nets", that have been lost or abandoned at sea. These synthetic materials can drift for years, entangling marine life and washing ashore along the coast of northern Australia. By reworking this waste into a handwoven vessel, Naawi transforms a symbol of environmental harm into an object of beauty, resilience and renewal. The sculptural form evokes vessels used to hold and carry valued resources, suggesting care for both culture and Country. Through the act of weaving, the artist restores meaning and purpose to materials that would otherwise remain as pollutants within fragile marine ecosystems.

Clinton Naina's multidisciplinary practice employs humour, irony and unconventional materials to explore identity, language and the ongoing effects of colonialism. In a e i o u – have a sniff of this, he returns to the vowels learned in primary school — the building blocks of written language. Repeated across a surface of bitumen and chrome spray paint, these familiar letters become unsettling rather than instructional. The work juxtaposes the authority of English literacy with materials that evoke industry, toxicity and the physical environment, transforming a lesson in language into a meditation on cultural power. The title's playful provocation introduces a note of dark humour, while the reflective chrome surface simultaneously attracts and repels. By reducing language to its most elemental sounds, Naina suggests both the human voice and the lament of histories shaped by dispossession, assimilation and the suppression of Indigenous knowledge.

Alexander Nganjmirra combined the visual languages of western Arnhem Land art with imagery drawn from contemporary life. His paintings often place ancestral knowledge, lived experience and popular culture side by side, creating works that are both playful and insightful. In Queen in helicopter looking at Country, he depicts a royal tour of Arnhem Land by the British monarch. Rendered in the artist's distinctive figurative style, the helicopter hovers above a rocky escarpment inhabited by human figures. A towering depiction of the Rainbow Serpent, articulated through intricate rarrk (cross-hatching), signals the enduring presence and power of this important ancestral being within the landscape. The juxtaposition of Indigenous visual traditions with an icon of colonial authority introduces humour while reflecting on the encounter between different worldviews. Bringing the global and the local into the same pictorial space, Nganjmirra invites viewers to consider how Country, culture and power intersect.

Sonya Rankine has a multifaceted creative practice spanning weaving, installation, poetry, singing and playwriting. In Nothing has changed 1–3, she transforms copies of The Koori Mail—Australia’s national Indigenous newspaper—into hand-coiled vessels that recall Aboriginal weaving traditions. Through the repetitive acts of rolling, stitching and binding, the newspaper becomes a container of stories, carrying the voices, histories and concerns of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. By reshaping a publication dedicated to Indigenous self-determination and representation, Rankine highlights the persistence of issues reported across generations. The work’s title reflects on the ongoing impacts of colonisation and the slow pace of structural change, while the vessel form speaks to resilience, continuity and cultural strength. Holding memory and knowledge, these woven forms suggest that stories endure even when circumstances remain unresolved, affirming the vital role of Indigenous community-controlled media in recording, sustaining and sharing lived experience.

Michael Riley was a pioneering Aboriginal photographer and filmmaker whose work explored identity, spirituality and the enduring impacts of colonisation. In Untitled (Bible), he presents a Bible suspended against an expansive blue sky. Part of his acclaimed Cloud series, the image transforms a familiar Christian symbol into a space for reflection on faith, history and belonging. Cloud brought together themes that Riley described as emerging from his childhood, Christianity and Aboriginal histories, using symbolic imagery to explore their interconnected legacies. Showing the Bible floating or flying through an atmospheric, purgatory space, Riley invites viewers to consider the complex relationship between Christianity and Aboriginal experience. Hovering between earth and heaven, it becomes a potent symbol of both spiritual belief and the colonial histories that have reshaped Aboriginal lives and communities. At once poetic and provocative, the image resists a single interpretation. It encourages reflection on religion and cultural continuity, change and resilience.

Yhonnie Scarce works primarily in glass, drawing on personal, familial and community histories to examine the ongoing effects of colonisation on Aboriginal people and Country. She is known for her distinctive blown-glass forms inspired by traditional bush foods—including yams, bush plums, bush bananas and silky pears—which become powerful metaphors for Aboriginal lives, stories and cultural knowledge. In White out, produced for her graduate exhibition in 2006, Scarce presents a group of delicate blown-glass forms tightly wrapped in white cotton twine. Referencing native food plants, the organic forms are partially concealed through repeated binding, creating a tension between visibility and obscurity. The interplay of fragile glass and resilient fibre evokes ideas of protection, containment and endurance. Suggesting histories that have been hidden, constrained or overlooked, the work also speaks to the strength of Aboriginal cultures and communities. By bringing together vulnerability and resilience, White out invites reflection on memory, survival and the persistence of cultural knowledge across generations.

Darren Siwes explores colonial history through staged photographic portraits. In this work from his Mis/perceptions series, the artist appears as a ghostly figure before the original wooden entry sign to Belair National Park, South Australia’s oldest national park, established in 1891. Created using long-exposure photography and printed through a silver dye-bleach process, the work’s luminous, reflective surface enhances its spectral quality. By photographing himself at this iconic site, Siwes asserts enduring Aboriginal presence while prompting reflection on histories of colonisation, exclusion and contested cultural memory.

Uta Uta Tjangala was a founding figure of the Western Desert painting movement and one of the original Papunya Tula artists. A respected cultural leader, he played a pivotal role in establishing the visual language of contemporary Aboriginal painting while advocating for the return of desert communities to their homelands. His work drew on ancestral stories and connections to Country, translating Tjukurrpa (Ancestral narratives) into bold and dynamic forms. In Paint tin, he transforms an everyday discarded object into a powerful expression of cultural continuity and creative adaptation. Painted with motifs associated with Western Desert iconography, the opened tin becomes both a sculptural object and a painted surface, extending the conventions of Papunya painting beyond canvas and board. Created at a time when contemporary Aboriginal art was gaining national recognition, the work reflects the resourcefulness and experimentation of early Papunya artists. By bringing together a mass-produced container and cultural knowledge connected to Country, Paint tin highlights the resilience of Aboriginal traditions and their capacity to remain vital within changing social and material worlds.

Judy Watson has a multidisciplinary practice spanning painting, printmaking, installation and sculpture. Drawing on her matrilineal connections to Waanyi Country in northwest Queensland, she explores memory, place and the often-hidden histories of colonisation, particularly the experiences of Indigenous people and women. Her works frequently evoke traces of presence embedded in the landscape, using layered imagery and subtle, atmospheric surfaces. In drowning in language, she creates a field of translucent colour in which forms appear and recede, suggesting fragments of memory, landscape and meaning. The title points to the complex relationship between language, identity and cultural transmission, reflecting the disruptions to Indigenous languages and knowledge systems caused by colonisation. Rather than offering a literal narrative, the work evokes the emotional and historical weight carried within language itself. Through layers of ink, marks and shifting, indistinct forms, Watson invites viewers to contemplate what is remembered, what is lost and what continues to endure across generations.