Reko Rennie-Gwaybilla is an interdisciplinary artist who was born in 1974 and grew up in Melbourne’s inner-west suburb of Footscray. However, his indigenous heritage lies with the Kamilaroi people of northern New South Wales. He explores his aboriginal identity through use of contemporary medium and through his art he aims to provoke discussion surrounding indigenous culture in urban environments. He has had twenty solo exhibitions and over 50 group exhibitions in his career so far producing works constantly since his beginnings as a full-time artist in 2009 (Cooke 2013).
Rennie-Gwaybilla was surrounded by art growing up as his father is a well-known aboriginal artist “Biggibilla Gummaroi” however, though he was always able to paint and draw…show more content… One of the references was ‘in reckoning the numbers of the people of the Commonwealth, or of a State or other part of the Commonwealth, aboriginal (sic) natives should not be counted.’ This referendum had 90.77% of people vote to change these discriminatory statements. This was the highest Yes vote ever recorded in a Federal referendum. The YES font Rennie-Gwagbilla has featured in this series was used in advertising and promotional material prior to this referendum. Rennie-Gwagbilla speaks about how he has “used the camouflage pattern to exploit the vulnerability of visual perspective and its subjective relationship with meaning” Usually camouflage is used to attempt to render the visible invisible by disorienting our eyes. This work however, plays with patterning, colour blending and contrasting areas of intensity and flatness in order to turn camouflages traditional use on its head. Rennie-Gwagbilla spoke about the work and his use of camouflage in it saying, “My use of camouflage aims to amplify, rather than conceal my identity, and to stake my claim to a luminous, commanding form of cultural visibility – to be counted”. The works aim to show that even fifty years on from the 1967 referendum, this country and its Government still have a long way to go when it comes to recognizing and restoring the rights of the traditional owners of this land (Rennie-Gwaybilla
