Waanyi people
Born 1961, Cloncurry, Australia
Lives and works in Brisbane, Australia

Waanyi artist Gordon Hookey began to practise art in the early 1990s. As a member of the groundbreaking proppaNOW artist collective, Hookey’s signature is his inimitable humour that manifests in puns, alliteration and poetic verse. A vocal contributor to the Aboriginal protest movement since the 1980s, more recently, Hookey’s protest banners — emblazoned with witty colloquialisms — have been seen at Brisbane rallies and later appeared in an institutional exhibition.

Hookey’s art often focuses on the present, responding to and seeking to change the here and now. APT10 features his most ambitious venture to date: the ‘MURRILAND!’ series of colossal and uncompromising history paintings. With these works, Hookey platforms versions of Australian history omitted from mainstream discourse and considers how these oversights have shaped the present. With Indigenous knowledge of important events, incidents and cultural narratives at risk of erasure, Hookey wants his art practice to record and foreground Indigenous histories for future generations.