The sunbaker
2003; printed 2024
Medium
inkjet print
Measurements
(108.0 × 130.0 cm)
Credit Line
Purchased with funds donated by Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family, Phil Lukies and Janet Whiting AM and family, and Violet Sheno, 2025
© Dianne Jones/Licensed by Copyright Agency, Australia
Gallery location
Gallery 4
Ground Level, NGV Australia
About this work
Dianne Jones reimagines Max Dupain’s iconic photograph Sunbaker by replacing the original figure with her own. By inserting herself, a Ballardong woman from Noongar Country, into one of Australia’s most recognisable images, Jones challenges stereotypes at the heart of national identity and repositions Aboriginal people within a visual narrative that has long excluded them. Her practice highlights what is missing from dominant accounts of Australian history and art. Since the early 2000s, Jones has reworked photographs by Australian artists such as Dupain, David Moore and Harold Cazneaux, using humour and quiet resistance to expose the colonial ideologies that shaped the images that continue to inform how Australian life is imagined today.