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Elders Portraits at Realm windows

Next date: Sunday, 28 April 2024 | 05:00 AM to Tuesday, 30 April 2024 | 05:00 PM

Paintings by artist Amanda Wright depict Aunty Daphne Milward and Aunty Irene Norman, Elders from Mullum Mullum Indigenous Gathering Place, Maroondah residents and long-time friends.

Gracing the Realm windows, the portraits were launched during Reconciliation Week in June with a Smoking Ceremony and Welcome to Country by Wurundjeri Elder, Uncle Bill Nicholson and performances by celebrated singer/songwriter Kutcha Edwards and Yeng Gali Mullum, a music group directed by Aunty Irene.

During NAIDOC Week in July, the works were complemented by the From our Elders video installation by Blak Crow filmmaker Daen Sansbury-Smith in ArtSpace at Realm, which featured perspectives on Eldership from nine Elders including Aunty Irene and Aunty Daphne.

The portraits will remain on the Realm windows until the 30 March 2024.

About

Aunty Daphne Milward

Recipient of the Council of the Ageing Victoria Senior Achiever Award 2022, Aunty Daphne Milward is a proud Yorta Yorta woman and long-time Maroondah resident. She has an extensive list of achievements as an advocate for First Peoples in Victoria over more than fifty-five years since she helped establish the Aboriginal Advancement League in 1967.

She was a director of the Victorian Women’s Trust and a member of the Equal Opportunity Commission of Victoria. In 1995, she established her own consultancy firm, Mandala Consulting Services, specialising in community development and cross-cultural awareness. Now in her eighties, Auntie Daphne is active as an Elder with Mullum Mullum Indigenous Gathering Place (MMIGP) and regularly engages with community and school groups. She exhibits as a member of the MMIGP arts group and performs with the Yeng Gali Mullum singing group. She recently began learning sign language so that she can sign Acknowledgments of Country.

Aunty Irene Norman

Proud Wailwan woman, Mullum Mullum Indigenous Gathering Place Elder and Ringwood resident, Aunty Irene Norman is a weaver, painter, poet and leader of the Yeng Gali Mullum music group. She regularly runs workshops to share the weaving skills passed down to her by her paternal grandmother as a child in regional New South Wales.

Weaving, for Aunty Irene, is a skill that she shares to connect people to each other, their history, and their country. Aunty Irene frequently exhibits at The Koorie Heritage Trust, and has organised a number of group exhibitions for MMIGP artists at Maroondah Federation Estate. Her portrait of Aunty Daphne Milward was part of the Archibald Prize Exhibition in 2016 at the Art Gallery of NSW in Sydney. She also teaches Indigenous Culture and Reconciliation in schools and the wider Community.

Amanda Wright

Amanda Wright is a Palawa artist whose family, on her mother’s side, is from Bruny Island, Tasmania. Amanda went to school in Boronia, before doing a Fine Arts degree at RMIT. Amanda comes from a family of artists, including her mother, her maternal grandfather, her sister and her mother’s cousin. When Amanda was three or four she recalls her uncle painting, and at that moment she decided that painting was for her. She has been painting ever since.

Amanda’s work is focused on tenderly conceived portraits of Aboriginal people that give a window into the subjects’ spiritual and emotional worlds. Her painting is inspired by her thoughts of her mother, grandmother and her great-grandmother, the circumstances they survived, their strength and their resilience. 'I found family and now I’m trying to find spirit. I just have to paint every day. I have so many ideas. Painting is all I have ever known.’ Amanda has been commissioned to created public art for Melbourne, Maroondah and Yarra Valley councils, and taken part in many group and solo exhibitions including as a member of Mullum Mullum Indigenous Gathering Place.