A thousand rivers collided and changed direction within my chest
Lionel Fogarty

"A Thousand Rivers Collided and Changed Direction Within My Chest" is a culminative act of resistance through the personal lens of prominent Yugambeh poet and activist, Lionel Fogarty. The exhibition is the first time Fogarty's raw painted works on paper will be shown to the public, exhibited beside a film work collaged from Fogarty's rich archival footage and poetry readings. His painted works on paper hold part-poems, newspaper clippings or archival photographs, and abstract imagery. A desire for a radical shift against structures of colonisation, and a deep sense of Blak-pride, come through Fogarty's subversive and playful use of language. His unboundaried approach to genre, material and practice reflects a life lived as, rather than for, resistance. As Fogarty says of the show, "this is an exhibition of song, dance, and story through words. It is important to know that the music within these words and art is for climate change, colonisation, Blak peoples, activism, and to understand what IS culture and what really is a contemporary push for young people to go against the grain of society."

Bio

Lionel Fogarty (b. 1958, Cherbourg, Australia) was born on Wakka Wakka land at Cherbourg Aboriginal Reserve in south-east Queensland. A Murri man, he has traditional connections to the Yugambeh people from the area south of Brisbane and the Kudjela people of north Queensland. His writing demonstrates that he is a poet of language as much as of politics, repurposing both traditional poetics and the speech of his people to delineate current circumstances of oppression alongside a vision of independent Aboriginal identity. Having been involved with the Black Panther Movement, the establishment of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, he has his roots in the Blak activism of the 70s though hasn't ceased his passion and urge to push against colonial structures and the grain of society right through to today. After his 18 year old brother, Daniel Yock, died in police custody in 1993 his activism and poetry has addressed Aboriginal Deaths in custody. To this day he has published over 15 books and collections of award-winning poetry and lives today on his country in Undullah, QLD .

EXHIBITION

20 May – 11 June

OPENING

6pm
Friday, 20 May