Gulumerridjin/Wardaman/KaraJarri artist Jenna Lee and Worimi artist Dean Cross join NGV Curator Sophie Gerhard to guide visitors on a journey through NGV’s Australian art collection.
Together, they’ll dive into the colonial narratives embedded in some of Australia’s most beloved works and movements, from John Glover’s landscapes and Impressionist paintings, to works by modernist Australian artists, shedding light on their deeper histories and legacies.
Through their insights, visitors will gain a fresh perspective on Australian art, prompting reflection and dialogue on the complex layers that underpin our history.
Speakers
Jenna Lee is a Gulumerridjin (Larrakia), Wardaman and KarraJarri Saltwater woman with mixed Japanese, Chinese, Filipino and Anglo-Australian ancestry. Using art to explore and celebrate her many overlapping identities, Lee works across sculpture, installation, body adornment, moving images, photography and projection. With a practice focused on materiality and ancestral material culture, Lee works with notions of the archive, histories of colonial collecting, and settler-colonial books and texts. Lee ritualistically analyses, deconstructs, and reconstructs source material, language and books, transforming them into new forms of cultural beauty and pride, and presenting a tangibly translated book.
Dean Cross is an artist primarily working across installation, sculpture and painting. Interested in the collisions of materials, ideas and histories, Cross is motivated by an understanding that his practice sits within a continuum of the oldest living culture on Earth – and enacts First Nations sovereignty through expanded contemporary art methodologies. His cross-disciplinary practice often confronts the legacies of modernism, rebalancing dominant cultural and social histories. Recent significant group exhibitions include Octopus 23: THE FIELD, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, curated by Tamsin Hopkinson (2023), FREE/STATE, Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide (2022), Photo 2022, Melbourne, curated by Brendan McCleary, Primavera 2021 #29, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, curated by Hannah Presley (2021). In 2023, Dean had a major solo exhibition Things That Are Real: Alvaro Barrington x Dean Cross at Cement Fondu, Sydney. His work is held by major institutions including The Art Gallery of South Australia, National Gallery of Victoria and Heide Museum of Modern Art. Dean currently lives and works on Walbunja Country.
Sophie Gerhard, Curator, Australian and First Nations Art, NGV
Generously supported by the Ullmer Family Foundation as part of Resonance: Truth Telling at NGV.