Noongar Country 2024 | Our Elders, Our Pathfinders

My name is Katelyn Whitehurst, I am a Wardandi, Menang Noongar woman through my Father’s Mother and will be a part of this year’s Noongar Country Curatorium. I have a large passion for supporting the Southwest Noongar community and an even larger passion for the arts. My own practice sees all mediums and forms, inspired by my culture and Country, I am a storyteller. My artwork explores expression and feeling, using bold colours, abstracted forms or installations of household objects – my ideas are what influences the shape of my work. My one hope is to take the viewer on an adventure, leaving them with an emotion or story they didn’t yet have when they entered. Together with the moorditj yorgas Amanda Bell and Zali Morgan I believe we can do just that.

Amanda Bell is a Yamatji woman, born on Whadjuk Country and has lived most of her life on Wardandi Country. She is a maker of things.

After some years soullessly toiling in the public service; making is freedom! Inspired by stories of warmth, pain, sorrow and humour, I am emerging onto this path as a maker of things and spaces. Finding the charm in the humdrum, seeking the heroic in the domestic, gives me the ability to find beauty amongst the pain. I am attempting to explore these ideas in my objects and in making places. Our stories made real. I seek to engage with others by telling stories in a way that is ‘right way’ for me as an Aboriginal person and artist, and to make a contribution to making spaces culturally safe in the arts and beyond. I come from experiences grappling with ‘otherness,’ often in the attempt to say something about the use of language and its role in the creation and maintenance of power structures. I also honour the rage.

Zali Morgan is a Whadjuk, Ballardong and Wilman Noongar woman, born and raised near Wooditchup on Wardandi Boodjar, now currently based near Boorloo. Zali has a deep passion for working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art and artists, particularly Noongar art and artists. She has worked closely with private and institutional collections, with a keen interest in decolonising practices. Zali’s practice spans Curating, Creative Writing, printmaking and sculpture. In her printmaking, Zali looks at iconic buildings and spaces within Boorloo and the Noongar region and attempts to expose the history and significance of the sites for Noongar people.

 

Photographer: Richard Van Wyk