Vernon Ah Kee
see me, 2006
Acrylic, charcoal and crayon on canvas
177 x 720 cm
Artist represented by Milani Gallery, Brisbane
Below: detail of centre panel
Artbank e-bulletin - March 2008
Each year Artbank purchases one major work for the collection. Over the last few years these purchases have included works by Robert Hunter, Dale Frank and Marie Hagerty. In 2007 Artbank was lucky in their purchase of a very significant work by Vernon Ah Kee. Below Artbank’s Senior Curator, Jackie Dunn, talks about the importance of the new work.
Geoffrey Cassidy, Director
Vernon Ah Kee
Artbank’s featured work this month is the haunting and poignant see me - a recent major purchase by important emerging artist Vernon Ah Kee. Of the Kuku Yalandji, Waanji and Gugu Yimithirr peoples, Ah Kee’s family was from Palm Island but he has lived in Brisbane for the past decade and a half.
Ah Kee is currently a doctoral candidate whose research, like his art practice, is primarily a critique of Australian popular culture with a focus on black identity. His works are heartfelt investigations of his Aboriginal and familial experiences.
The first of Ah Kee’s works to launch him into the spotlight involved the use of text in hard-hitting pieces that were both conceptually powerful and visually compelling. See me is a more recent work that showcases Ah Kee’s fine and sensitive drawing. The work’s first two panels are of Ah Kee's grandfather, noted boxer Mick Miller, and are drawn from images that the artist found in the historic Norman Tindale Collection at the South Australian Museum. The third panel is of the artist’s son.
While black/white politics are still Ah Kee’s focus, in see me he extends his extraordinary ability to personalise what would otherwise be a merely political or historical exercise. The end result is work as powerful and compelling as his earlier text pieces. The artist depicts his young son alongside his grandfather - using history to make a powerful personal statement on the survival and continuity of a specifically Indigenous identity.
See me has just been rented to Sydney trading firm Optiver, as part of an exciting display of works that includes works by Michael Snape, Hossein Valamanesh, Christopher Langton, Marian Drew, Sam Tupou and Daniel Wallwork amongst others. Further challenging works by artists such as Gordon Bennett, Danie Mellor and Jubilee Wolmby join the Ah Kee work in presenting the complexities - and pleasures - of contemporary Indigenous art practice.
Optiver’s CEO, Rob Keldoulis, wanted visitors and staff to be challenged and invigorated by the art selected. His brief was to create an environment which would push people's ordinary conceptions as to what a corporate workplace could be. He wanted a mix of sculptures, paintings, installation art and anything else that could be thrown into the mix that would make employees in the office think and feel differently about art and its relationship to people and places.
Jackie Dunn, Senior Curator
Artbank Touring Exhibition
Artbank’s national touring exhibition Artbank: Celebrating 25 Years of Australian Art has opened in Geraldton Regional Art Gallery and will be display until 17 May. Art lovers in South Australia and regional New South Wales will be able to view the show later in the year.
