Tony Albert

Tony Albert, Girramay, Kuku Yalanji peoples, Brother (Our Present), 2013, pigment print on paper x 3, 150 x 100 cm, Collection: UTS Art Collection

Bio

Tony Albert’s (b. 1981) multidisciplinary practice investigates contemporary legacies of colonialism, prompting audiences to contemplate the human condition. Drawing on both personal and collective histories, Albert explores the ways in which optimism might be utilised to overcome adversity. His work poses important questions such as how do we remember, give justice to, and rewrite complex and traumatic histories? Albert’s technique and imagery are distinctly contemporary, displacing traditional Aboriginal aesthetics with an urban conceptuality. Appropriating textual references from sources as diverse as popular music, film, fiction, and art history, Albert plays with the tension arising from the visibility, and in-turn, the invisibility of Aboriginal people across the news media, literature, and the visual world.

Albert has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally. Recent solo exhibitions include Conversations with Margaret Preston, Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney (2021); Duty of Care, Canberra Glassworks, Canberra (2020); Wonderland, Sullivan+Strumpf (2019); Native Home, Sullivan+Strumpf (2019); Encounters, Art Basel Hong Kong, Hong Kong (2019) Confessions, Contemporary Art Tasmania, Hobart (2019); Visible, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2018) and Unity, Sullivan+Strumpf (2018). Recent selected group exhibitions include Occurrent Affair, University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane (2021); NIRIN: 22nd Biennale of Sydney, Sydney (2020); The National 2019: New Australian Art, Carriageworks, Sydney (2019); Dark Mofo, Museum of Old and New Art, Tasmania (2019); I am Visible commission, Enlighten Festival Canberra, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (2019); Just Not Australian, Artspace, Sydney (2019); Weapons for the Soldier, Hazelhurst Arts Centre, Sydney and touring (2018); Continental Drift, Cairns Regional Art Gallery, Cairns (2018); Defying Empire: 3rd National Indigenous Art Triennial, National Gallery of Australia (2017); and When Silence Falls, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2016). Albert’s work is represented in major national collections including the National Gallery of Australia; the Australian War Memorial, Canberra; the Art Gallery of New South Wales; the Art Gallery of Western Australia and Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art.