Indigenous Women in the Arts

Amrita Hepi is a professional dancer/dancemaker, writer and activist.

She is a Bundjulung and Ngapuhi woman interested in movement as manifested by all bodies, and reimagining and creating the greatness that will be WOC first nations futures.

Her work and practice sits in the nexus between pop culture and contemporary dance with a focus on intersectionality. She has exhibited and performed at the Sydney Opera House, Nextwave festival, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Banff Centre in Canada and hosts a radio show about independent dance on FBi radio.

Most recently, she joined Western Australia's Indigenous Contemporary dance company OCHRES while continuing to also teach pop culture dance classes around the country.

born 1981, Subiaco, Western Australia - Yamatji Wajarri, Dutch & English

Nicole Monks is Sydney based trans-disciplinary creative of Aboriginal, Dutch and English Heritage; her practice is informed by her cross-cultural identity within the current epoch. Monks focuses on the learned behaviours we attach to objects/places, in particular the similarities and differences between Western and Aboriginal culture, subversively allowing the Australia culture to come into questioned. Monks began her career as a Designer with a scholarship from KVB College and has since restudied certificate 4 in Fine Arts at Great Lakes TAFE to develop a conceptual artistic practice, including new media, photography, instillation and public art.

Renown as a solo and collaborative artist, Monks founded the company ‘blackandwhite creative’, an initiative to generate cultural awareness by collaborating with Aboriginal & non Aboriginal individuals & organisations to weave Aboriginal philosophies of sustainability, innovation and collaboration into contemporary Art & Design projects.

Since 2011 Monks has exhibited at Boomalli Aboriginal Art Co-operative with her first solo show in 2014. In 2012, Monks presented her first international exhibition at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum and in 2014 at the Parliament of NSW Aboriginal Art Prize, Monks won the UNSW Art & Design Residency and received Highly Commended. Monks has won the Fishers Ghost Photography award and a Sydney Design Award for her showcase at Australian Indigenous Fashion Week. In 2015, Monks received an Aboriginal Design grant from artsNSW, won the Drift art installation award in Mandurah, WA and the Fishers Ghost Aboriginal Art award. Recent shows include; White Noise (with Amala Groom), Underbelly Arts Festival, and a solo exhibition at the Perth Centre for Photography.

Amala Groom is a conceptual artist whose practice is informed by Indigenous methodologies. Her work, as a form of passionate activism, reads as a social and political commentary on contemporary politics and race relations. Articulated across diverse media, Groom’s work often subverts and unsettles western iconography in order to enunciate Aboriginal stories, experiences and histories, and to interrogate and undermine the legacy of colonialism.

Recent shows include; Bungaree’s Farm, Cairns Indigenous Art Fair, Tanks Art Centre, (in)visible: the First Peoples and War at Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery, Mass Group Incident: Tell Me My Truth at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art and White Noise (with Nicole Monks) presented at Underbelly Arts Festival 2015. Groom is the recent recipient of the Creative Live Work Spaces (CLWS) City of Sydney Residence program and the 107 Presents Artist Residency.

Talia Smith was born in New Plymouth, New Zealand and is of Samoan, Cook Island and NZ European heritage. She completed a Bachelor of Design and Bachelor of Visual Arts in 2012 at UNITEC Auckland, majoring in Photography and has been practicing as an artist and curator in both Australia and New Zealand.

Her practice uses the mediums of photography and video to examine the emotional and physical traces we leave behind on the landscape, the histories we build and the ruins we leave. She has exhibited her work in Berlin, Sydney, Melbourne and New Zealand with solo shows at Kings Artist Run in Melbourne, Enjoy Gallery in Wellington and the Billboard project at Te Tuhi in Auckland. Smith also works under the collaboration SINGLE BROWN FEMALE with Auckland based artist Leilani Heather, SBF investigates the humorous happenings surrounding mistaken identity. Using their shared everyday experiences and lives as inspiration, SBF subverts notions of race, identity and the gaze.

Smith’s curatorial practice engages with emerging photography and time based practices and has curated exhibitions both in New Zealand and Australia. She is currently working on an online platform as a way of exhibiting works called The Surrounds.

Smith is now based in Sydney, Australia.

Taree Sansbury is an emerging freelance artist and NAISDA Dance College graduate.

Taree is a proud Kaurna, Narungga and Ngarrindjeri woman from South Australia. In her short time as a freelance artist Taree has had the opportunity of performing in Force Majeure’s two-year Culminate/Cultivate program and undertook an internship with Australian Dance Theatre in 2014.

A highlight for Taree was working with independent creative Vicki Van Hout on her latest full-length work Long Grass, which premiered at the Sydney Festival and later on at Dance Massive 2015.

Taree has worked with some of Sydney’s highly acclaimed independent makers, such as Victoria Hunt, in her most recent full-length work Tangi Wai and Martin Del Amo’s development of his latest work Champions.

More recently Taree performed in the 2016 Next Wave Festival for Thomas E. S. Kelly in his debut full-length work [MIS]CONCEIVE.