Vernon Ah Kee (b. 1967) works across text, video, photography and drawing to critique Australian culture from a modern Aboriginal perspective. His works respond to exoticised portrayals of ‘primitives’ and reposition Aboriginal Australians as contemporary people inhabiting real and current spaces and time.
Ah Kee’s work has been exhibited in significant exhibitions throughout Australia and internationally, including ‘Boundary Lines’, Griffith University Art Museum (2018-19); ‘Everywhen: The Eternal Present in Indigenous Art from Australia’, Harvard Art Museums (2016); ‘When Silence Falls’, Art Gallery of New South Wales (2015-16); ‘Encounters’, National Museum of Australia (2015-16); ‘Brutal Truths’, Griffith University Art Museum (2015-16); ‘Imaginary Accord’, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane (2015); ‘GOMA Q’, QAG|GOMA, Brisbane (2015); ‘SALTWATER: A Theory of Thought Forms’, 14th Istanbul Biennial (2015); ‘Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art’, National Gallery of Canada (2013); ‘My Country: I Still Call Australia Home’, QAG|GOMA (2013); ‘unDisclosed’: 2nd National Indigenous Art Triennial’ (2012); ‘Ideas of Barack’, National Gallery of Victoria (2011); ‘Once Removed’, Australian Pavilion, Venice Biennale (2009); and ‘Revolutions: Forms that turn’, the 16th Biennale of Sydney (2008). His work is held in all major Australian public art collections.
