KENT MORRIS IN MELBOURNE NOW

The NGV’s 2023 Melbourne Now exhibition has officially launched.  As part of the blockbuster’s Print Portfolio, Kent Morris expands on his ongoing series Unvanished, which redresses the absence of First Nations cultural representation in urban geography and was first exhibited in 2019 at the University of Virginia (United States) during a residency at their Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection.

“Underneath the concrete is the land our ancestors walked on, but so much has been removed and overlaid on our Country”, Morris explains. A sovereign statement of Indigenous identity and strength, Morris reconfigures colonial forms, technologies and structures into mirrored, geometric images reflecting the systems, shapes and designs of the land’s rightful custodians.

This new print is drawn from Morris’s public installation, Rainbow Lorikeet #2, 2022, which is featured on the walls of the St Kilda Foreshore Vaults. To create the work, Morris studied the rhythm and habits of native birds interacting with various urban spaces, using the birds’ resilience to reflect on how Indigenous knowledge and culture also survives and adapts to continual, irreversible change.

Kent Morris in Melbourne Now

24.03.2023 – 20.08.2023, 10am-5pm daily
The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia
Fed Square, Melbourne VIC 3000
Free entry

Image: Kent Morris, Rainbow Lorikeet #2, 2022.