Artist: Bronwyn Bancroft from Bundjalung

This show includes works by Shirly Amos, Jessica Birk, Euphemia Bostock and founding member of Boomalli Artists Cooperative, Bronwyn Bancroft, amongst others.

A Bundjalung artist of the Djanbun clan, Bronwyn Bancroft has been a practicing artist for thirty years. Born in Tenterfield in northern New South Wales, Bancroft is the youngest of seven children. Bancroft has said that her great-great-great-grandmother Pemau was one of only two or three survivors from her clan, the rest murdered when their land was settled by a white farmer.[1] Her grandfather and uncle worked in local goldmines.[10] She recalled that her father’s education was obstructed by discrimination because he was Aboriginal. Following her father’s advice on the importance of getting an education or a trade, Bancroft completed high school in Tenterfield before moving to Canberra in 1976 where she completed a Diploma of Visual Communications through the Canberra School of Art, followed by a Master of Studio Practice and a Master of Visual Arts (Paintings) at the University of Sydney 1999. Bancroft was a founding member of the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative,[6] one of Australia’s oldest Indigenous-run organisations established in 1987 by a group of urban Aboriginal artists in Redfern who resisted being “packaged” with the acrylique dot paintings coming out of Western Desert communities in the Northern Territory at that time. Boomalli artists initially encountered resistance from mainstream art world however their persistence has succeeded in challenging common misconceptions about urban-based Aboriginal art and culture and celebrates the diversity of Indigenous artistic expression in Australia today .

Catherine Hickson, Assistant Curator