Art Guide Art + Book Extract: Fiona Foley Provocateur: An Art Life

Veiled Paradise, an exhibition at QUT Art Museum which surveys three decades in the extraordinary career of NAS alumna Fiona Foley, closes 26 September 2021.

If you can’t get to Brisbane to see the show—or if you’ve been but still want to know more— the biography Fiona Foley Provocateur: An Art Life offers an in-depth look at what drives the Badtjala artist. Written by Louise Martin-Chew, this biography is also record of a friendship between artist and author. Filled with intimate details and told in a conversational tone, Fiona Foley Provocateur catalogues not only the trajectory of Foley’s life and art practice, but also the historical disenfranchisement and ongoing survival of Aboriginal culture.

Head to the Art Guide website below to read an extract where Foley discusses her educational experiences, from always being an outsider and the “new kid” as a child, to attending art school at East Sydney Technical College.

Image: Founding members of Boomalli, 1987: Michael Riley, Fernanda Martens, Euphamia Bostock, Arone Meeks, Fiona Foley, Brenda Croft, Jeffrey Samuels, Tracey Moffatt, Avril Quail and Bronwyn Bancroft. Margaret Olah Photography.