Words as activism: workshop with Penny Evans
10am - 12pm, Saturday 5 April
All ages and abilities welcomeFree, limited places, bookings required, BOOK NOW.
Taking Richard Bell's Embassy as a source of inspiration, local Gamilaroi artist Penny Evans is facilitating a placard making workshop exploring the power of words.
Penny Evans recently won the 2024 Koori Mail Indigenous Art Award, for her powerful work 'Elephant'. Created in the aftermath of the Voice referendum in 2023 she began making this major body of text-based wall pieces as a response to the deafening NO from non-indigenous Australians, and as a way to process her feelings of rage. Using paint and signs we will create our own placards formed from conversations with Penny and the group, around themes that strike passion in us. At the end of the workshop we will share our placards with the public by placing them in and around Embassy in the Lismore Quadrangle.
Bell’s installation Embassy, inspired by the first Aboriginal Tent Embassy pitched on the grounds of Canberra’s Parliament House in 1972, continues this legacy as a place of solidarity and resistance - a space where people ask questions, share ideas, and create plans for a better future.
About Penny Evans
Penny Evans is an artist based in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales. Her ceramics and mixed media collages connect with family, community, and national histories of colonisation’s aftermath. Evans is the recipient of numerous awards and residencies and exhibits her work nationally, including CEREMONY, the 4th Indigenous Art Triennial at the National Gallery of Australia in 2022.
"The focus of my art is always identity, country and decolonising and my practice is a process driven enquiry. My artwork creates a trail over time which mark and illustrate my decolonizing journey back to who we are, back to country, back to country within me. There’s a lineage of ideas, a mapping. My interrogation is through the process of making, so it’s about DNA mixed with ideas gathered from many people and places, country and kin. The work is never about one thing, always multi-layered. My work is a legacy for my kids and family." - Penny Evans
