Adjunct Professor Wayne Quilliam is one of Australia’s pre-eminent Indigenous photographic artists, curators and cultural advisors working on the international scene. His awards include the 2009 NAIDOC Indigenous Artist of the Year, the Human Rights Media Award, the Walkley Award for photojournalism and the Supply Nation business of the year award. He was also a finalist in the 2016 Bowness Art Award. Wayne has created and curated over 300 exhibitions throughout the world and has been published in more than 1000 magazines, books and newspapers. In recent years he has held solo exhibitions in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth, Havana, Tokyo, Berlin, New York and at the United Nations in New York and Geneva.
Today, Wayne Quilliam is on the blog to introduce us to his new photography collection, Culture is Life, and to share some of his favourite books. Read on!
Wayne Quilliam
Elevator Pitch: Culture is Life
It’s impossible to define our collective identities through a series of photographs. In essence, each image in this book explores notions of self, time, space, place, and connection as a form of cultural consciousness. It offers a unique insight into the culture of Indigenous Australia.
Culture is Life brings together stories I’ve collected over the past 30 years working in rural, remote and urban communities. As a storyteller, artist and photographer, my work responds directly to the shared experiences of my people and my culture, allowing me to create a platform for commentary. The work is at times subtle in its approach, but steeped in authenticity as the visual narrative attempts to make the invisible visible.
So often we assign value to people based on the colour of their skin, or to places based on the remoteness of the location. It’s all sensationalised at the discretion of the media. But this book is reality – each and every photograph has a unique story and those stories are from the First peoples of this land.
We are shades of our land. We are not one people, nor a single voice, or only of the city or the bush. We are many people and many cultures. Our Elders hold the knowledge systems, and the young carry our hopes. We share an understanding but hold many beliefs. Our past and our futures are joined. We’ve known great loss and shown great strength. We are the First people of these lands. We are shades of our lands. We are here …
Book Recommendations from Wayne Quilliam
Between Indigenous Australia and Europe: John Mawurndjul
edited by Claus Volkenandt and Christian Kaufmann
Australian Indigenous art is increasingly drawing the attention of international audiences, in part because of the amazing stories the artists tell of human creativity. John Mawurndjul is an Aboriginal artist whose work is collected and displayed in art museums and galleries throughout the world. The authors here debate questions such as how art should be viewed and approached in intercultural terms.
Buy it here
No Way Yirrikipayi!
by children from Milikapiti School, Melville Island, with Alison Lester
Yirrikipayi the crocodile lives on the Tiwi Islands. he’s hungry. He goes hunting, chasing animals in the sea and on land. What’s for dinner? Meet the animals and learn their Tiwi names in this delightful book for all ages.
Buy it here
Aboriginal Country
by Lisa Bellear
Much of Lisa Bellear’s poetry is politics made eloquent. In Aboriginal Country many poems seem to spark with frustrated energy over Australia’s political crossed circuits regarding a treaty with our First Nations peoples – as promised by Prime Minister Hawke in 1988.
Buy it here
Sand Talk
by Tyson Yunkaporta
What happens when global systems are viewed from an Indigenous perspective? How does it affect the way we see history, money, power and learning? Could it change the world? This remarkable book is about everything from echidnas to evolution, cosmology to cooking, sex and science and spirits to Schrodinger’s cat.
Buy it here
Songlines: Power and Promise
by Margo Neale and Lynne Kelly
Songlines are an archive for powerful knowledges that ensured Australia’s many Indigenous cultures flourished for over 60,000 years. Weaving deeply personal storytelling with extensive research on mnemonics, Songlines: The Power and Promise offers unique insights into Indigenous traditional knowledges, how they apply today and how they could help all peoples thrive into the future.
Buy it here
Possessing the Pacific: Land, Settlers, and Indigenous People from Australia to Alaska
by Stuart Banner
An original and broadly conceived study of how colonial struggles over land still shape the relations between whites and indigenous people throughout much of the world.
Buy it here
—Culture is Life by Wayne Quilliam (Hardie Grant) is out now.
Culture is Life
A Photographic Exploration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in Modern Australia
Pre-eminent Aboriginal photographer Wayne Quilliam has an archive of thousands of images and interviews with Indigenous people across the country. Through the images in this stunning collection, Wayne's work explores the nuances of Indigenous thinking and identity, and focuses on how the First peoples view their place within the contemporary culture of Australia...
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