Megan Cope

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Megan Cope
Born1982 (1982) (age 42)
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
NationalityAustralian
Notable workThe Blaktism
AwardsWinner, Western Australian Indigenous Art Award, 2015

Megan Cope (born 1982) is an Australian Aboriginal artist from the Quandamooka people of Stradbroke Island/Minjerribah. She is known for her sculptural installations, video art and paintings, in which she explores themes such as identity and colonialism. Cope is a member of the contemporary Indigenous art collective ProppaNOW in Brisbane.

Contents

Early life and education

Cope was born in Brisbane in 1982, of Quandamooka heritage. [1] She earned a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Visual Communication), at Deakin University in Victoria in 2006. [1]

Career

Cope has managed and curated many artist-run projects and events, including tinygold [2] and the BARI (Brisbane Artist Run Initiative) Festival. [3] [4] Cope is also a member of the Brisbane-based contemporary Indigenous art collective ProppaNOW. [5]

Cope creates video, installation, sculptures, and paintings which challenge notions of Aboriginality, and her work examines the Australian narrative and our sense of time and ownership in a settler colonial state. [6] A main focus of Cope's artwork is to shed light on colonialism and the myths and facts that come along with it. [7]

Her work has been exhibited in the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of Western Australia, the Melbourne Museum, as well as many other public and private collections throughout Australia. [8]

In 2016–2017, Cope's work was exhibited along with that of Vincent Namatjira in the Tarnanthi Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art at the Art Gallery of South Australia. [9]

In 2017, the Australian War Memorial commissioned Cope as official war artist (the first female Aboriginal woman in the role), to travel to the Middle East to accompany various Australian Defence Force units, in order to record and interpret topics relating to Australia's contribution to the international effort in the region. A series of works entitled Flight or fight was mounted on North Stradbroke Island blue gum. [10]

In the 2020 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, titled Monster Theatres, Cope created an installation made of rocks, rusted steel drums, wire and huge drill bits that functions as an instrument designed to be played by musicians using modified bows and which mimics the sound of the bush stone-curlew, a native bird which is thriving on Minjerribah (now North Stradbroke Island), but endangered in New South Wales and Victoria. [11]

Cope lives and works in Melbourne. [1]

Projects

Video

Exhibitions

Sculptures

Paintings

Cope's paintings use synthetic paint as well as Indian Ink. [13]

Awards

Collections

The Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane purchased Re Formation 2016–2019 in 2019, [20] and included it in the Water exhibition (7 December 2019 – 26 April 2020). [21]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stradbroke Island</span> Island near Brisbane, Australia

Stradbroke Island, also known as Minjerribah, was a large sand island that formed much of the eastern side of Moreton Bay near Brisbane, Queensland until the late 19th century. Today the island is split into two islands: North Stradbroke Island and South Stradbroke Island, separated by the Jumpinpin Channel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">North Stradbroke Island</span> Island that lies within Moreton Bay in the Australian state of Queensland

North Stradbroke Island, colloquially Straddie or North Straddie, is an island that lies within Moreton Bay in the Australian state of Queensland, 30 kilometres (19 mi) southeast of the centre of Brisbane. Originally there was only one Stradbroke Island but in 1896 it split into North Stradbroke Island and South Stradbroke Island separated by the Jumpinpin Channel. The Quandamooka people are the traditional owners of North Stradbroke island.

Richard Bell is an Aboriginal Australian artist and political activist. He is one of the founders of proppaNOW, a Brisbane-based Aboriginal art collective.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brown Lake (Stradbroke Island)</span> Lake in Queensland, Australia

Brown Lake (Bummeria) is a perched lake on North Stradbroke Island, in South-East Queensland, Australia. The ecosystem is an example of a coastal non-floodplain sand lake and is characterised by acidic water, nutrient-poor and sandy soil, shrub-like vegetation and wet heathland.

The Western Australian Indigenous Art Awards was a non-acquisitive art award established by the Art Gallery of Western Australia and funded by the Government of Western Australia from 2008 to 2015, to support and encourage Indigenous Australian artists.

Cairns Indigenous Art Fair is an arts and cultural event in the northern Australian city of Cairns, that showcases art by Contemporary Indigenous Australian artists. Established in 2009, the art fair is the opening event of the Cairns Festival.

Jandai is an Australian Aboriginal language of the Quandamooka people who live around the Moreton Bay region of Queensland. Other names and spellings are Coobenpil; Djandai; Djendewal; Dsandai; Goenpul; Janday; Jendairwal; Jundai; Koenpel; Noogoon; Tchandi. Traditionally spoken by members of the Goenpul people, it has close affinities with Nunukul language and Gowar language. Today now only few members still speak it.

proppaNOW is an arts collective for Indigenous Australian artists in Queensland. Aiming to counter cultural stereotypes and give a voice to urban artists, the collective has mounted several exhibitions around the country. The collective was founded by Richard Bell, Jennifer Herd and Vernon Ah Kee in 2003 and formalised in 2004.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quandamooka people</span>

The Quandamooka people are Aboriginal Australians who live around Moreton Bay in Southeastern Queensland. They are composed of three distinct tribes, the Nunukul, the Goenpul and the Ngugi, and they live primarily on Moreton and North Stradbroke Islands, that form the eastern side of the bay. Many were pushed out of their lands when the English colonial government established a penal colony near there in 1824. Each group has its own language. A number of local food sources are utilised by the tribes.

Tony Albert is a contemporary Australian artist working in a wide range of mediums including painting, photography and mixed media. His work engages with political, historical and cultural Aboriginal and Australian history, and his fascination with kitsch “Aboriginalia".

Aileen Moreton-Robinson is an Indigenous Australian academic, Indigenous feminist, author and activist for Indigenous rights. She is a Goenpul woman of the Quandamooka people from Minjerribah in Queensland. She completed a PhD at Griffith University in 1998, her thesis titled Talkin' up to the white woman: Indigenous women and feminism in Australia. The thesis was published as a book in 1999 and short-listed for the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards and the Stanner Award. A 20th Anniversary Edition was released in 2020 by University of Queensland Press. Her 2015 monograph The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty was awarded the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association's (NAISA) prize in 2016.

Jennifer Herd is an Australian Indigenous artist with family ties to the Mbar-barrum people of North Queensland. She is a founding member of the ProppaNOW artist collective, and taught at the Queensland College of Art in Brisbane, where she convened both the Bachelor of Fine Art and Contemporary Australian Indigenous Art. In 2003 she won the Queensland College of Art Graduate Students prize, the Theiss Art Prize, for her Masters of Visual Arts.

Tarnanthi is a Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art held in Adelaide, South Australia, annually. Presented by the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) in association with the South Australian Government and BHP. It is curated by Nici Cumpston.

Vincent Namatjira is an Aboriginal Australian artist living in Indulkana, in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara in South Australia. He has won many art awards, and after being nominated for the Archibald Prize several times, he became the first Aboriginal person to win it in 2020. He is the great-grandson of the Arrente watercolour artist Albert Namatjira.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vernon Ah Kee</span> Indigenous Australian artist

Vernon Ah Kee is a contemporary Australian artist, political activist and founding member of ProppaNOW. Based primarily in Brisbane, Queensland, Ah Kee is an Aboriginal Australian man with ties to the Kuku Yalandji, Waanji, Yidinji and Gugu Yimithirr peoples in Queensland. His art practice typically focuses on his Aboriginal Australian identity and place within a modern Australian framework, and is concerned with themes of skin, skin colour, race, privilege and racism. Ah Kee has exhibited his art at numerous galleries across Australia, including the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, and has also exhibited internationally, most notably representing Australia at the 2009 Venice Biennale and the 2015 Istanbul Biennial.

The Queensland Aboriginal Protection Association (QAPA) was responsible for the creation of various mission stations or Aboriginal reserves in Queensland, Australia, in the late nineteenth century.

Myora Mission was established as a mission station in 1892 in the Colony of Queensland, at Moongalba on Minjerribah. It became an Aboriginal reserve and "industrial and reform school" in 1896, was used as a source of cheap labour, and eventually closed in 1943.

Paul Tripcony (1901–1975) was an Indigenous Australian and a collector of rare books and Aboriginal stone artefacts from Minjerribah, also known as Stradbroke Island.

Black's Camp or Wynnum Camp was the name for a large, permanent Aboriginal campsite established on the shores of Quandamooka in what is now Wynnum, City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Black's Camp constituted a settled Aboriginal village, similar to those noted elsewhere in Queensland by archaeologist Harry Lourandos. It was one of several permanent campsites recorded in the Wynnum district in the mid to late 1800s.

The Institute of Modern Art (IMA) is a public art gallery located in the Judith Wright Arts Centre in the Brisbane inner-city suburb of Fortitude Valley, which features contemporary artworks and showcases emerging artists in a series of group and solo exhibitions. Founded in 1975, the gallery does not house a permanent collection, but also publishes research, exhibition catalogues and other monographs. Liz Nowell has been the director of the gallery since 2019.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Megan Cope" (PDF). This Is No Fantasy. 2019. Retrieved 7 April 2020.
  2. "Tales from the Cold Ghost III: August 1st - August 22nd, 2009". 19Karen. 2009. Retrieved 7 April 2020.
  3. "Brisbane Artist Run Initiatives Festival". 17 September 2010. Retrieved 7 April 2020.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Projects". Megan Cope. Retrieved 7 April 2020.
  5. "TheBlack Line: Exhibition at Bett Gallery, Hobart". proppaNOW. 26 February 2014. Retrieved 7 April 2020.
  6. Arcilla, Mariam (2017). "Interview with Megan Cope". Archived from the original on 22 April 2018.
  7. "Megan Cope - Bereft". ArtSpace. Retrieved 7 April 2020.
  8. Benton, Penelope (25 January 2019). "Megan Cope". NAVA. Retrieved 7 April 2020.
  9. "Tarnanthi Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art". This Is No Fantasy. Retrieved 7 April 2020.
  10. "Australian War Artist: Megan Cope". This Is No Fantasy. Retrieved 7 April 2020.
  11. Jefferson, Dee (5 April 2020). "The monsters under the bed: Exhibition reveals our worst nightmares are those closest to home". ABC News. Retrieved 5 April 2020.
  12. "The Blaktism - This Is No Fantasy".
  13. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "Selected Work - This Is No Fantasy".
  14. "Megan Cope".
  15. "Water". Queensland Art Gallery & Gallery of Modern Art. Retrieved 12 February 2020.
  16. "Water". Queensland Art Gallery & Gallery of Modern Art. Retrieved 12 February 2020.
  17. 1 2 "Megan Cope". nutmegandhoney.blogspot.com.
  18. "Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art". www.facebook.com.
  19. Pappas, Chloe (6 July 2015). "Indigenous art award winner explores Aboriginal identity". ABC News. Retrieved 5 April 2020.
  20. "Megan Cope's 'Re Formation' takes the oyster shell as its subject". QAGOMA Blog. 8 January 2020. Retrieved 12 February 2020.
  21. Water

Further reading