Wulgurukaba & Bindal Country (Townsville),Warrgamay, Nywaigi & Bandjin Country (Hinchinbrook)
Both Ways: ALIEN
Tony Albert
'A billboard exhibition illuminating First Nations perspectives of 'place' in North Queensland.'
Using the ubiquitous and popular mode of commuter advertising, the billboard, this exhibition illuminates First Nations stories of the lands traversed between Warrgamay, Nywaigi & Bandjin Country (Hinchinbrook) through Wulgurukaba and Bindal Country (Townsville) to Gudjal Country (Charters Towers). Both Ways brings together contemporary artwork and archival images to explore the larger narratives of Indigenous Australia, highlighting histories and voices that are often unheard in popular forums in North Queensland.
Feature Image Credit: “Alien” 2019, Acrylic and found vintage objects applied to plastic-polyester, powder-coasted aluminium, 40.5 x 50.5cm, © Tony Albert.
About the Artist
Tony Albert
Language Group: Girramay, Yidinji and Kuku Yalanji
Tony Albert’s multidisciplinary practice investigates contemporary legacies of colonialism, prompting audiences to contemplate the human condition. Drawing on both personal and collective histories, Albert explores the ways in which optimism can be utilised to overcome adversity. His work poses important questions such as how do we remember, give justice to, and rewrite complex and traumatic histories?
Albert’s technique and imagery are distinctly contemporary, displacing traditional Australian Aboriginal aesthetics with an urban conceptuality. Appropriating textual references from sources as diverse as popular music, film, fiction, and art history, Albert plays with the tension arising from the visibility, and in-turn, the invisibility of Aboriginal people across the news media, literature, and the visual world.
Albert is the first Indigenous Trustee for the Art Gallery of New South Wales and is also chair of the AGNSW Indigenous Advisory Group. Albert’s commitment to connecting and collaborating with other Indigenous artists and the wider community within his practice, has made him an integral part of Australia’s visual arts sector and the wider Australian community.
Albert has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally. Recent solo exhibitions include; Conversations with Margaret Preston, Sullivan+Strumpf (2021); Duty of Care, Canberra Glassworks (2020); Wonderland, Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney (2019); Native Home, Sullivan+Strumpf, Encounters, Art Basel Hong Kong (2019) Confessions, Contemporary Art Tasmania (2019); Visible, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2018) and Unity, Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney (2018).
Recent group exhibitions include; Occurrent Affair: proppaNOW University of Queensland Art Museum (2021); NIRIN: 22nd Biennale of Sydney (2020); The National 2019: New Australian Art, Carriageworks, Sydney; Dark Mofo, Museum of Old and New Art, Tasmania (2019); I am Visible, commission for Enlighten Festival Canberra, National Gallery of Australia, ACT (2019); Just Not Australian, Art Space, Sydney (2019) ; Weapons for the Soldier, Hazelhurst Arts Centre, Sydney and touring (2018); Continental Drift, Cairns Regional Art Gallery, Queensland (2018); Defying Empire: 3rd National Indigenous Art Triennial, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (2017); and When Silence Falls, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2016).
Albert’s important work has been acknowledged industry-wide with a number of prestigious awards, prizes and commissions. He is strongly represented in major national collections including the National Gallery of Australia; the Australian War Memorial, Canberra; the Art Gallery of New South Wales; the Art Gallery of Western Australia and Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art—Queensland Art Gallery.
Event Information
Location Details
This billboard exhibition will feature six billboards, with three along the Bruce Highway from Wulgurukaba and Bindal Country (Townsville) to Warrgamay, Nywaigi & Bandjin Country (Hinchinbrook), and three along the Flinders Highway from Wulgurukaba and Bindal Country (Townsville) to Gudjal Country (Charters Towers).
