Around the corner from the PBS 106.7FM building, this massive mural is being unveiled. It has been created to celebrate the twentieth birthday of our neighbours - the Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (VACCHO), which is the peak body for Aboriginal health in Victoria. Many celebrations are being planned for the year and will honour both VACCHO and its Membership, the 27 Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services currently operating in Victoria.
Under Matt Adnate’s leadership, three Aboriginal artists will produce and install a vibrant Victorian Aboriginal footprint for the face of its building in Collingwood to celebrate and showcase 20 years of Aboriginal health in Aboriginal hands.
VACCHOs CEO wanted this mural to depict a couple of key messages, that being ‘there are 50,000 Aboriginal people here in Victoria and that Aboriginal culture is rich, vibrant and thriving’.
Ruby Kulla Kulla
Ruby is an aspiring young artist who wants to create and tell stories through music, film and art. Art has been important to Ruby since she was quite young, and feels it’s a way for her to escape the world. Her tribe is Lama Lama from the Cape York Peninsular area but she grew up here in Melbourne. Ruby is 18 and recently completed year 12 which landed her to study fine art this year at University.
Ray Thomas
Ray is considered one of Victoria's most significant artists and is now the inspiration to many young indigenous artists around Australia. He comes from the Gunnai people of the Gippsland region of Eastern Victoria. Mainly self-taught, he become involved in painting through being introduced to the late Lin Onus. Since then, he’s art has been a constantly evolving journey since the mid 1980’s. Ray’s new works display an extraordinary technical skill level and a mastery of both oils and acrylics media, but most importantly they belie a confidence and serenity of a mature artist, content in his achievement of learning culture to the extent that he now is able to show his peoples story's through his art for all to see.
Integral to Ray’s art has been educating the wider public about his identity and his own mob here in Victoria with an emphasis on his Gunnai heritage and blood line connection across the state. The uniqueness of Aboriginal art/culture in the South East needs to be on display constantly and in a large scale format such as this project it can only help with celebrating it (culture) ourselves and educate the mainstream society at the same time.
Kulan Barney
Kulan is a local from Melbourne but his family roots are in the western districts of Victoria. On his mother’s side, Gunditjmara and on his father’s side, Bunjalung whom are spread across the northern parts of NSW up to the Southern Border of Queensland. Kulan’s art is an expression of both he and his family, and what it means to be Aboriginal in the 21st century living a modern day lifestyle, while at the same time holding onto his cultural beliefs about our land, and our people.
Matt Adnate
Adnate is an artist that realises his portraits in spray paint. He has moved past his roots in graffiti, utilising the medium to carry his realist style into the fine art realm. Heavily influenced by the chiaroscuro of renaissance painters like Caravaggio, Adnate embraces portraiture like the masters of the XXI century. Elevating graffiti art above the level writing, Adnate’s subject matter and their subsequent status often belies the intent of his portraits. His works are often cropped by evocative slices of vibrant colour, channeling a presence of character, much like a still life uses its background as a setting for detail and showing of fine brushstrokes. Adnate’s realism is highlighted by the use of what appears careless, but is frequently calculated blocks of vibrant colour.
For more information on VACCHO, head to http://vaccho.org.au/
