Australian artist Destiny Deacon, a Kuku and Erub/Mer (North-East Cape York and Torres Strait) woman, is known for having coined the term 'blak', in a reclaiming and recasting of a word with myriad connotations of colonialism and prejudice. Her work sits in the uncomfortable but compelling space between comedy and tragedy. Working across photography, video, printmaking, mixed media and installation, Deacon interrogates the way in which Aboriginal people have been, and continue to be, misrepresented within popular culture.
This publication, edited by Myles Russell-Cook, Curator, Indigenous Art at the NGV and curator of the exhibition DESTINY, is the largest in-depth study of Deacon's practice ever to appear in book form. Through all-blak scholarship and images of Deacon's work spanning more than thirty years, we gain a strong sense of Deacon as artist and person, and of her enduring fascination with the human condition.
Published in association with the exhibition DESTINY held at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Federation Square, 27 March - 9 August 2020.
