OCCURRENT AFFAIR Opening Weekend Activities

12 – 18 years Art Making Workshops: 12 – 2pm

Free hands-on drawing workshop for young people 12 – 18Futures: How do you feel when you think about the future?

Saturday 24 June 12 – 2pm Free admission, drop in

Futures: How do you feel when you think about the future?

Young people aged 12 – 18 are welcome to drop-in between 12 – 2pm for a free collaborative art making workshop. This large-scale collaborative drawing program will be led by the FLENK collective. Come prepared to get your hands dirty!

General Public Panel Talk: 3 – 4:30pm

Sovereignty was never ceded: Protest, resistance and resilience in the work of the proppaNOW artist collective

Saturday 24 June 3 – 4.30pm

Cell Block Theatre, National Art School Free admission, booking required.

‘proppaNOW’ – it’s about being proper; it’s about the protocol. And ​‘now’ is about reacting to now. We don’t make art about what happened in the Dreaming. We don’t make art about what happened in the Creation Time. We make art about now. — Gordon Hookey 

Join Dr Stephen Gilchrist in conversation with the artists Tony Albert, Megan Cope, Warraba Weatherall, Lily Eather, and Gordon Hookey, members of the Meanjin/Brisbane-based Aboriginal artist collective proppaNOW. The panel discussion will focus on their collaborative approach to contemporary activism through their art practices. The major touring exhibition OCCURRENT AFFAIR addresses current socio-political, economic, and environmental issues while celebrating the strength, resilience, and continuity of Aboriginal culture. Together the panel will examine questions relating to sovereignty, protest, and resistance as well as established notions of Aboriginal Art and Identity.

The proppaNOW Aboriginal artist collective includes Vernon Ah Kee, Tony Albert, Richard Bell, Megan Cope, Jennifer Herd, Gordon Hookey, and the late Laurie Nilsen. The collective was formed in 2003 with the intention of challenging the institutional discrimination of ​‘urban’ Aboriginal artists. Through the strength of the collective, together the artists provoke, subvert and rethink damaging stereotypes of what Aboriginal art is and can be. The collective’s name is drawn from the Aboriginal colloquial expression ​‘proper way’, meaning to do things with due regard to appropriate protocols and community respect, reflecting the strong moral and political principles which guide the group to challenge institutionalised racism.

Belonging to the Yamatji people of the Inggarda language group of northwest Western Australia, Dr Stephen Gilchrist is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Indigenous Studies at the University of Western Australia. He is a writer and curator who has worked with the Indigenous Australian collections of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, the British Museum, London, the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College.

Image: Laurie Nilsen, Dollar Dilemma Flag, 2020, digital print on textile. Installation view, OCCURRENT AFFAIR, UQ Art Museum, 2021. Reproduced courtesy of the artist estate and FireWorks Gallery, Brisbane. Photo: Carl Warner

The proppaNOW artist collective (left to right): Gordon Hookey, Jennifer Herd, Tony Albert, Megan Cope, Richard Bell, Vernon Ah Kee. Photo: Rhett Hammerton. The collective also includes the late Laurie Nilsen.