Kent Morris
(Barkindji, b. 1964, Townsville. Lives and works in Melbourne)

Kent Morris is a Barkindji man whose artworks develop from single photographs taken while walking on Country, which has been shrouded by built environments since colonisation. By reconfiguring architectural elements through a First Nations lens, Morris reveals the continuing presence and patterns of Aboriginal history, culture, experience and knowledge in the contemporary Australian landscape, despite the ongoing violence of colonisation.

For Melbourne Now, Morris expands on his ongoing series Unvanished, which redresses the absence of First Nations cultural representation in urban geography and was first exhibited at the Art Gallery of South Australia for Tarnanthi in 2017. It was also exhibited at the University of Virginia (United States) during a residency at their Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection in 2019.

‘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.

An alumnus of the National Gallery of Australia’s Wesfarmers Indigenous Leadership Program, Morris holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Monash University and a Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art from Victorian College of the Arts. He has held various solo shows across Melbourne, most recently at Vivien Anderson Gallery in 2021, and has exhibited at the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards, National Gallery of Victoria, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Monash Museum of Art, and Art Gallery of South Australia. His work is held in various public collections, including Artbank, National Gallery of Victoria, Koorie Heritage Trust, Parliament House Art Collection, University of Technology Sydney, Wesfarmers Collection Australian Unity and the regional galleries of Horsham and Hamilton, as well as private collections in Australia and the United States. He is also the CEO of The Torch, an organisation whose Indigenous Arts in Prisons and Community program has provided art, cultural and arts industry support to Indigenous offenders and ex-offenders in Victoria since 2011.