GORDON HOOKEY: Banner Making Workshop
Workshop: Saturday 24 May
Duration: 10am - 1pm (3 hours)
Hookey’s playful banners and tableaus subvert mainstream historical narratives and integrate pop-culture and humour. His irreverent works explore politics in Australia and the global legacy of colonialism.
The Banner making workshop invites you to work on creating your own visual language through finding inspiration by contemplating source material that Hookey draws on participants are encouraged to make their own protest banner on an issue they care about. This could be social, political, or environmental, addressing issues that are local, national or international.
Workshop materials supplied.
Cost: Free
Registration: Complete form here
Meet the Artists
(L-R) Richard Bell, Tony Albert, Jennifer Herd, Warraba Weatherall, Megan Cope, Lily Eather, Shannon Brett, Gordon Hookey, Vernon Ah Kee. Photo by Shannon Brett.
Vernon Ah Kee
Vernon Ah Kee was born in 1967 in Innisfail, North Queensland. He lives and works in Brisbane. He belongs to the Kuku Yalandji, Waanji, Yidinji and Gugu Yimithirr people. Ah Kee has risen in prominence as one of Australia’s most dynamic artists. Ah Kee investigates the mistreatment of our country’s First Nations Peoples since colonisation, focussing on lived experiences and those of his ancestors.
Tony Albert
Tony Albert was born in 1981 in Townsville, Queensland. He lives and works in Sydney. Albert is a descendant of the Girramay, Yidinji
and Kuku-Yalanji peoples. He works across a range of media, often recycling kitsch, mass-produced objects that feature stereotypical
depictions of Indigenous people.
Richard Bell
Bell was born in 1953, Charleville, Queensland. He lives and works in Brisbane. Bell is a member of the Kamilaroi, Kooma, Jiman and Gurang Gurang communities. Bell is an artist, activist and provocateur. He harnesses his work to provoke debate about identity, place and politics, posing complex and humorous challenges to preconceived ideas about Aboriginal art.
Megan Cope
Megan Cope was born in 1982 in Brisbane. She lives and works between Miinjerribah (North Stradbroke Island) and Bundjalung Country, NSW. Cope is a Quandamooka woman. Her site-specific sculptural installations, video work and paintings investigate issues relating to identity, the environment and cartography practices. She often uses maps to challenge concepts of ownership and place, and history and time.
Jennifer Herd
Jennifer Herd is from Eumundi, Queensland. She lives and works in Brisbane. Herd is a Mbarbarrum woman whose family roots lie in far North Queensland. Herd draws on her past experiences and knowledge in costume design, often incorporating stitching and pin holes in her installations, painting, drawing and sculptural works. She creates shield designs as a way of connecting to her heritage and culture. Herd’s shield designs are presented as a reminder of speaking truth to power, frontier resistance and the aftermath of cultural identity stripped bare.
Gordon Hookey
Gordon Hookey was born in 1961, Cloncurry, Queensland. He lives and works in Brisbane. Hookey belongs to the Waanyi/Waanjiminjin peoples. Gordon Hookey is well-known for his use of humour, irony and wit to provoke and challenge the status quo. While studying at the College of Fine Arts at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, he became a member of Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative, which was founded in 1987 in Redfern by artists like Tracey Moffat, Fiona Foley, Michael Riley and Avril Quaill.
Laurie Nilsen
Born 1954, Roma, Queensland. Laurie Nilsen lived and worked in Brisbane until his passing in 2020. Nilsen was a Manadandanji artist. His practice was charged with ideas surrounding Indigenous and gender issues, emus (the artist’s totem) and introduced species, religious doctrines, and the presentation of language. His work spans sculpture, drawing, painting, and printmaking, and often incorporates barbed wires that have been used in rural Queensland to threaten native species like emus. In the early 1990s, Nilsen was a founding member of the Campfire Group that preceded proppaNOW.
Shannon Brett
Shannon Brett is a Wakka Wakka/Butchulla/Gooreng Gooreng artist and experienced researcher/writer/educator who is skilled in various areas of research, arts management, curatorial (museums and galleries), arts writing, fashion design, graphic design, public speaking, photography and arts mentorship. They are currently a PhD Candidate at the Queensland University of Technology—interrogating the construction of racial whiteness in Australia and responding to systemic racism and patriarchy from decolonial and black feminist perspectives. Brett is also Adjunct Curator at the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane, and holds a Bachelor of Contemporary Australian Indigenous Art; Photography and Fine Art via the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University. Brett has exhibited internationally while working in numerous arts institutions throughout Australia, maintaining their position as a curator and educator.
Warraba Weatherall
Warraba Weatherall is a Kamilaroi visual artist, Lecturer at Griffith University and PhD candidate, who is currently based in Brisbane. Weatherall’s artistic practice has a specific interest in archival repositories and structures, and the life of cultural materials and knowledges within these environments. He is also a lecturer for the Contemporary Australian Indigenous Arts (CAIA) degree at Griffith University’s, Queensland College of Art. Weatherall is passionate about shifting cultural norms within the Australian visual arts sector and contributes to the sector through artistic practice, education and curation.
Lily Eather
Lily Eather was born in 1996 in Brisbane. She is a Mandandanji woman who lives and works in Brisbane, and the daughter of the late Laurie Nilsen, an early member of proppaNOW and renowned multidisciplinary artist in his own right. Eather has a deep commitment to the upkeep of her father’s legacy, which she had demonstrated through the completion of a Graduate Diploma majoring in Art History at The University of Queensland. She is passionate about Indigenous and Australian art and recognises the need for Indigenous curatorship locally and globally. Eather also enjoys a career as a Theatre Nurse at the Mater Private Hospital.
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body.
Other images: Richard Bell - Embassy, 2013 - ongoing; Tony Albert -Terra Nullius (with-Scrooge), 2021; Richard Bell - You Can Go Now film screening
Last Updated: 14 May 2025
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