I AM: a powerful declaration of Indigenous identity at the Art Gallery of Western Australia
- Written by The Conversation
Ngank, the sun, warms a morning in Bunuru, the second summer season, on Boorloo Whadjuk Noongar lands.
I’m sitting outside the Art Gallery of Western Australia, here to see the I AM exhibition. This collection of Aboriginal artworks has been drawn from the State Art Collection by Carly Lane, a Murri woman from Queensland, and curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art at the gallery.
A small crowd is now milling, waiting for the ten o’clock opening. One man cannot wait. I watch him walk to the locked glass doors, press his nose and the palms of his hands against the pristine pane, and stare longingly inside, trying to catch someone’s attention. He retreats, then returns, four times in as many minutes.
It’s a space he wants to enter, but he’s not allowed in – yet. I think about the traditional custodians of the land I’m on. They’ve been here for tens of thousands of years, yet from 1927 to 1954 they were restricted by law from being in this very spot without a permit.
Ironically, this segregation was instigated by the Chief Protector of Aborigines, who sought to create a refuge for white citizens. It’s within living memory for some and indelibly marked in the spirits of others through deep time.
Soon, we are all invited in. The man rushes to the front and disappears into the building.
It takes me no time to realise this collection is not driven by aesthetics alone. It is a coming together of rich individual identities voicing their history, knowledge and lived experiences so that, collectively, the greater palette of Peoples emerges.
It privileges the multiple stories of creation, of connection to Country and people, and life lived within the complex realities of a colonised existence.
Articulating identity
Gordon Bennett’s Painting for a New Republic (The inland sea) spreads itself across the wall. It marks the start of a journey centring the many facets of identity. The canvas echoes foundations of his personhood, both inherited and imposed. As we unite with the blood red, blacks, bright yellow and white of his bold marks, we ask ourselves who we are too.
I am urged to stand in front of Making the Warakurna to Warburton Road, by Judith Yinyika Chambers of the Nganyatjarra People of Western Australia. This story is brought to life with tjanpi grass, raffia, acrylic wool and wire – media both old and new – woven together to spin a yarn about community.
It reminds me of Ian Abdulla’s paintings and I am transfixed. I am sitting around the karla (campfire) with them. I can hear the axe head’s dull thump into the tree trunks followed by its echo, the tractor’s throaty gurgle, and the dog’s sharp incessant bark amid all the activity.
Tamisha Williams of the Manyjilyjarra People of Western Australia shares her photographic digital works printed on cotton rag paper, Chilling out Ngurra (home). The muted brightness of these images insists you pause and contemplate what home is.
Christopher Pease’s Whalers arrests my attention. Oil on canvas, it is beautifully realised. Noongar iconography is transposed over 19th century prints, a harpooned whale with a target painted on its side, struggling in the wake of the assault.
I am taken back to Albany, Minang Country where my father was born. As a child my Nanna took me on a drive to the top of the hill above the whaling station, the bloody sight and offensive stench keeping the visit short.
Ancestral presence and resistance
The Wandjina, the Supreme Creator of the Ngarinyin, Worrorra, and Wunambal peoples from the Kimberley region of Western Australia, is a welcome sight. He stares out from Leah Umbagai’s ochre and pen drawing, Baddaa Badaa (I’m telling you a story), summoning eye contact.
Donny Woolagoodja’s linocuts – Namarali (Worrorra God) and Wandjina the Rainmaker – invite quiet reverence.
Humour abounds too. Tiwi man Mai Luki Harry Carpenter’s carving of the Spirit Man Purukapali has an arresting grin that is hard to take your eyes off, like he’s told a joke only he understands.
I also love Julie Dowling’s painting of Noongar warrior Yagan, surrounded by colonisers – homogenous and dull in their aspect and appearance.
Dianne Jones, a Ballardong Noongar artist, brings irreverence and satire to the space with her photographic digital prints, her own image seamlessly merged into classic stereotypical images of 1940s suburban mums going about their lives. She instils an Aboriginal presence in places previously marred by blunt exclusion.
Yhonnie Scarce’s glass installation confronting the dark history of British nuclear testing in South Australia will stay with you long after you’ve left the building, as will Fiona Foley’s bold print of the Hedonistic Honky Haters, HHH#1 (pictured in the header image).
The curation of I AM is mindful and cohesive, a visual and textural manifesto of Australia’s Indigenous art. It is not an exhibition to rush through. You’ll be so glad to view it for yourself. I know I am.
I AM is currently showing at AGWA. The exhibit will have two major rotations, introducing new works in August 2026 and again in early 2027.
