She has been actively involved in the Victorian Aboriginal Community for most of her adult life, working for numerous peak statewide Koorie community and Government organisations across Health & Human Services, Children & Youth, Education, Justice and Arts sectors. An accomplished actor and entertainer, Kylie has performed in numerous films, television and theatre productions. She was a co-founder and Artistic Director of ILBIJERRI Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Theatre Cooperative; a Deadly Award winner and is also a Koorie Women Mean Business Arts Award and Sydney Myer Performing Arts Indigenous Award recipient.

Kylie now works for Creative Victoria as Senior Manager, First Peoples, having worked for the last decade in various roles within the Department of Health and Human Services. She is committed to improving the current and future creative industry outcomes of Victorian First Peoples guided by the principle of Aboriginal self-determination.

Maree’s continuing desire to affirm and reconnect with her cultural heritage has seen her revification of the traditional possum skin cloaks, together with the production of contemporary designs of kangaroo teeth necklaces, river reed necklaces and string headbands adorned with kangaroo teeth and echidna quills, in both traditional and contemporary materials such as glass and 3D printing.

Maree Clarke’s multi media installations of photography including lenticular prints, 3D photographs and photographic holograms as well as painting, sculpture and video installation further explore the customary ceremonies, rituals and language of her ancestors and reveal her long held ambitions to facilitate cross-cultural dialogue about the ongoing effects of colonisation, while simultaneously providing space for the Aboriginal community to engage with and ‘mourn’ the impact of dispossession and loss.

Maree is known for her open and collaborative approach to cultural practice. She consistently works in intergenerational collaboration to revive dormant cultural knowledge – and uses technology to bring new audiences to contemporary southeast Aboriginal arts.

Maree Clarke has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally, and in 2021 she was the subject of a major survey exhibition Maree Clarke – Ancestral Memories at the National Gallery of Victoria. Other recent exhibitions include Tarnanthi, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide (2021), The National, Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney (2021), Reversible Destiny, Tokyo Photographic Museum, Tokyo Japan (2021) and the King Wood Mallesons Contemporary Art Prize, for which she was awarded the Victorian Artist award. In 2020 she was awarded the Linewide Commission for the Metro Tunnel project (current) and is the recipient of the 2020 Australia Council Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Fellowship.

Born in Perth, away from her ancestral country she has lived most of her life in Victoria and most of that in and around Melbourne. During an extended circuit of the continent she wrote a novel, influenced by certain experiences gained on the road. She has since won a Black&Write! Indigenous Writing Fellowship for that novel ,Terra Nullius. Terra Nullius was published in Australia by Hachette Australia and in North America by Small Beer Press.

Gail is a long-standing arts practitioner referencing the Wimmera and Grampians/Gariwerd region and has been involved in numerous exhibitions including Yalukit Willam (St Kilda).

She works mainly in the areas of painting, printmaking, silversmithing and has recently been working on conceptual work through photographic means. She has produced group and individual exhibitions in Canberra, Melbourne and country Victoria over a number of years, drawing on family history and cultural connections to the Wimmera region of Victoria. Additionally, her work has been showcased within a number of Government reports and initiatives, and utilised for logos. She worked previously at the National Museum of Australia and Koorie Heritage Trust Inc., showcasing Indigenous art.

A particular passion of hers is to support other South Eastern Australian Aboriginal artists in promotion of culture in their region. Gail is currently Curatorial Manager at the Koorie Heritage Trust.

Between 2013 and August 2022, she was Curator and Head of the Oceania section of the Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas at the British Museum in London. In this position, she was involved in key research projects with Australian colleagues transforming knowledge of and access to collections of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander materials in British and Irish museums. Her most recent publication is the co-edited volume Ancestors, artefacts, empire: Indigenous Australia in British and Irish Museums, published in 2021 by British Museum Press.

Over the course of her career, Prof Sculthorpe has served as a member of the Australian Heritage Council, the Australian State of the Environment Committee, as a board member of Museums Victoria, and a council member of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. In 2021, she was elected as an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

Peter has been a multiple finalist for the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards, the Victorian Indigenous Art award, and received the three major awards in its ten year history. In addition to a successful solo career, Peter is notable for his collaborations with other artists; performing with Anna Leibzeit and Kaz Adams as post-punk apocalyptic disco group The Treaters since 2012. Recently he has undertaken collaborative works with non-Aboriginal artists, including Katie Jacobs and Ingrid Tufts for Dingo Spirit, which was a finalist in the 2017 Craft Victoria Awards. More recently his collaboration with textile artist Megan Evans has produced an exhibition Squatters and Savages for the Ballarat Regional Art Gallery. Peter’s work is an elaboration of a previous work Just Sayin’ which consisted of a reworking of the colonial images from the galleries print collection; diffracting the colonisers view of Aboriginal people with the mercurial wit of the constantly shifting negotiations of queer and black identities.

Peter’s intersecting experiences as an Aboriginal queer man and his work with community health and community arts organisations such as Thorne Harbour Health, The Torch and VACCHO has given him a unique perspective as a practicing artist and community cultural development worker.

Through her practice, Waup weaves together threads of lost history, ancestral relationships, motherhood, and the passage of time, culminating in contemporary expressions that speak to her past, present, and future. In her words,

“As a multidisciplinary artist, I’m guided to utilise so many different mediums—they really talk to me—and in turn they’re able to explain my story in different ways, they all connect with each other. Material diversity is a big part of what I do in my practice—I’m happy to move across various media and am always open to exploring new materials and approaches that connect to the work I am making at the time.”