Aboriginal Culture, Heritage
& Arts Association of NSW

This year’s nominees for the ACHAA IMAGinE Award for Excellence by an Aboriginal Curator share an unwavering commitment to truth-telling, challenging the dominant narrative:  the national significance of communities to Aboriginal civil rights movements; calling out paternalistic propaganda that perpetuated assimilation policies; the healing power of matriarchal traditions passed down from mother to daughter; decolonising a museum’s past representations and the enduring legacy of resistance, organisation and activism. They remind us that while we cannot live in the past, the past lives in us.

The five NSW Aboriginal curators nominated represent just more than half of potential nominees from the past year, marking the growth in recognition of the importance for Aboriginal stories to be told by Aboriginal people.

For five years now, this ACHAA award, presented at the Museums & Galleries of NSW IMAGinE Awards, has recognised the importance of this principle of First Nations First as most recently embedded in the State Government’s Creative Communities arts and culture policy and also the Federal Government’s arts policy.

Guided by their communities, Elders and extended family connections, each of these nominees has risen to the challenges of curating exhibitions of excellence that require asking the challenging and sometimes difficult questions. In doing so, they seek not to divide by guilt but unite through the healing powers of art and cultural expression. They are:

Dr Mariko Smith
Yuin
Her Name is Nanny Nellie
Australian Museum

The exhibition’s focus was a plaster cast sculpture of an Aboriginal woman part of the museum’s past, who had been stripped of her identity. The exhibition began its development by recognising the museum’s past practices as inappropriate: treating the sculpture as a scientific display as opposed to a human one. The museum worked with descendants of Nanny Nellie whom the sculpture had been based on to reclaim her identity and re-introduce her as the woman that she was. Mariko grounded Her Name is Nanny Nellie in institutional truth-telling and reconciliation in action, taking the public on a learning journey on the nuanced complexities in past and present representations of Aboriginal peoples in Australian public history.

Kyra Kum-Sing
Malera Bandjalan
Celebrating 50 Years of the Aboriginal Housing Company
Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative/Mangejup Arts and Cultural Centre

The exhibition celebrates the Aboriginal culture and history of the Redfern area and the victories of the Aboriginal Housing Company (AHC) over the past 50 years in the face of ongoing Government insufficiencies. Embedded throughout the exhibition are historical timelines and recreations of key spaces, exhibiting memories and moments in the history of the AHC and the Block. Having grown up in Redfern, Kyra drew on her personal knowledge and community connections to create a space that highlights Redfern as the birthplace of countless Aboriginal political and civil rights movements. As this was the first time that the AHC’s collection has been curated, Kyra honoured their history by creating this exhibition as a tribute to the Redfern Aboriginal community and its incredible strength and resilience.

Meagan Gerrard
Gamillaraay/Wailwan
Secrets of Dawn
Coota Girls Aboriginal Corporation

The exhibition is a project of Coota Girls Aboriginal Corporation, a First Nations Stolen Generations Organisation founded by former residents of the Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls. The exhibition views this history through the lens of Dawn, a magazine created by the NSW Aborigines Welfare Board for Aboriginal people and which served as a propagandised view of the Aborigines Protection Act (1909-1969). Meagan Gerrard, the Executive Director of Secrets of Dawn, is a descendant of Coota Girls Survivor Aunty Lorraine Darcy Peeters. Meagan collaborated with Coota Girls Survivors and descendants to deliver an innovative and powerful truth-telling experience. Alongside historical content, Meagan also included contemporary artworks and interviews from Coota Girls Survivors to illustrate ongoing intergenerational impacts of forcible removal and assimilation and their journey of healing and reconnection since.

Keith Munro
Gamilaraay
Esme Timbery and Family Artist Room
Museum of Contemporary Art

The Esme Timbery and Family Artist Room was initiated, developed and presented by Keith Munro, MCA Director of First Nations Art & Cultures in close collaboration with the artist’s family. Keith worked to honour the significance of the artist’s legacy by highlighting the matriarchal practice of shell working done by La Perouse women for generations, with contemporary manifestations that amplify this important cultural practice. The room shines a light on saltwater stories that connect Kamay (Botany Bay) to Warrang (Sydney Cove) to make them visible to wider audiences.

Aleshia Lonsdale
Wiradjuri
Guwayu: for all time
Mudgee Arts Precinct

This exhibition features a powerful collection of works by 16 First Nations artists curated by Mudgee-based Wiradjuri woman, Aleshia Lonsdale and examines dispossession and resistance, shedding light on the region’s history 200 years after the Declaration of Martial law. The artists each speak to the parallel experiences of Aboriginal people living with the consequences of dispossession, extermination and assimilation whilst honouring the resistance of the broader First Nations peoples through political activism, cultural and artistic practice and storytelling. Guwayu; for all time showcased the meta-temporal nature of Australia’s history where the past, present and future exist together.