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In October, the National Gallery of Victoria will host a major mid-career retrospective of Melbourne-based Kamilaroi artist Reko Rennie. The exhibition traces his journey from making works on the inner-city streets of Melbourne to institutions around the world.

The western suburbs of Melbourne in the late s.

A single mum gathers her children in the morning of what will prove to be a breathless, scorching Melbourne summer’s day.

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Through his art, Reko explores what it means to be an urban Aboriginal in contemporary Australian society. The National Gallery of Victoria Indigenous curator, Stephen Gilchrist, highly commended the artist's work for his uncompromising politics and technical virtuosity. Rennie received no formal artistic training but as a teenager discovered graffiti, which would become an all-consuming passion. He quickly began producing original art on the streets of Melbourne. Subsequently Rennie has matured into an interrogative and highly innovative artist.

They make their way into the city and enter the doors of the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). The air conditioning sweeps over them. The mother takes a seat on one of the couches in the foyer and pulls out a novel to read. The kids, used to this routine, disperse, and leave her to her reading. Her son, Reko aged twelve immediately heads to the courtyard and stands in front the Rodin sculpture.

He looks around to make sure he is not being watched and he touches its foot.

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His hands glide over its toes and heel. The cool feel of smooth bronze. He then makes his way to see the Tibetan Buddhist sculptures. He has committed each of their names to memory. All of this while his mother continues to read and the young Reko explores the gallery, checking in on old favourites throughout the day, avoiding the watchful eyes of the museum’s docents.

These days are spent like this. There are no funds for snacks or gifts from the vibrantly coloured gift shop, just a faithful “bubbler” with ice cold water that hurts your teeth.

Fast forward to two years ago. Reko picks up his mother Barbara and takes her on a drive to the city.

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They walk into the NGV. He tells her over lunch in the institution’s fancy restaurant that he’s got a show coming up here, a retrospective appropriated in the name Rekospective. All those hours spent wandering the museum under the guise of escaping the heat has come to this. They both embrace and cry. Safe in the knowledge that this road, the road to this point, has been long and rough.

But they have arrived.

Reko rennie biography for kids What Do We Want? Blaxploitation was a low-budget genre which often saw African American creatives producing, directing and soundtracking films that represented their culture. Adam Briggs, a Yorta Yorta man and popular hip-hop artist, author and actor is cast in this work as the protagonist, or sensei. Reko Rennie is an interdisciplinary Australian artist who explores personal and political narratives through the lens of his Kamilaroi heritage, alongside broader cultural themes around power, identity, memory, and history. The three-channel video and sound installation draws us into a world of shadows and silhouettes, as if we are observing the secret meeting of an underground resistance movement.

A home coming of sorts.

The NGV curator Myles Russell-Cook describes Rekospective as “a celebration of Reko Rennie, one of Melbourne’s most exciting artists. The exhibition tells Rennie’s story of starting out as a street artist and expanding his practice over decades to become an internationally recognised figure in the contemporary art world.

Exploring themes of sovereignty, advocacy, politics, visibility, identity, and the urban ‘blak’ experience, this show pushes audiences’ understanding of what contemporary Indigenous art is, and what it can be.”

Prominently featured in the exhibition will be several of the artist’s landmark video works. These works are expansive multi-channel projections that act as self-portraits for both Rennie and his family.

The work OA_RR, , details a road trip undertaken by Rennie returning to a site in the back of Walgett, New South Wales, near the Namoi River. This is where his grandmother was forcibly taken from her family at age eight. It shows the artist driving a modified Rolls Royce north into his ancestral homelands in Kamilaroi Country. The Rolls Royce, which will also physically appear in the retrospective, is a symbol of authority and wealth appropriated by the artist—the initials R.R.

are his own. The film ends in a furious crescendo accompanied by Nick Cave’s score as the car furiously does burnouts in the red dirt, the concentric circles painted in the sand simultaneously referencing Aboriginal and western suburbs’ culture.

In the companion work to OA_RR, Initiation OA_RR, , Rennie presents a self-portrait also in direct reference to his grandmother, who dreamt of being an opera singer, an eventuality that was prohibitively out of her reach due to circumstances forcibly placed upon her through removal.

The location is the docks of Footscray.

Rennie talks with fondness about this place, even though he readily acknowledges both its rough past and rapidly changing present. He has an understanding of the characters of this landscape, the union men, the crims, and the honest working people navigating the trials of poverty and isolation. Yorta Yorta soprano Auntie Deborah Cheetham with the Melbourne Symphony offer a score sung in Rennie’s grandmother’s Kamilaroi language as the figure of the artist drives the wide industrial streets in his bright pink Monaro, equally a symbol of wealth and power as the Rolls Royce.

Biography for kids amelia earhart In this way, Rennie asserts his pride in being Aboriginal while subverting romantic notions of Aboriginal identity. The diamond relates to dendroglyphs tree carvings found in Kamilaroi Country, while the flag is a symbol of Aboriginal identity and solidarity. The accompanying crown refers to the sovereignty of Aboriginal people. Regalia is a reminder. Look at Regalia and describe the different colours, shapes and designs you can see.

Both vehicles are painted to stand out in a type of reverse camouflage that has consistently been present in Rennie’s career. He has never hidden as an artist whether that be on trains and inner-city walls or on museum walls globally. This locality, of Rennie as a Melbourne artist, immersed in its streets and culture was a significant motivation for curator Myles Russell-Cook, “his origins as an artist all begun in Melbourne.

This is a timely moment to present the work of a greatly respected Melbourne born artist.”

This origin story of a young man equally consuming Rodin and Melbourne’s rapidly developing graffiti scene seems filmic and improbable, but this retrospective bares out this journey.

Reko rennie biography for kids youtube Part of that, he puts down to the unfortunate fact that people globally have suffered the predations of colonialism, a subject Rennie frequently explores in his art. I have to stay true to those roots. Rennie says he felt an obligation to weave this once outlawed language into his work. Around the age of fifteen, Rennie experienced an artistic epiphany upon discovering the work of Australian artist Howard Arkley. Today, Rennie is in the enviable position where he enjoys the success, renown and resources to make his grandest artistic fantasies a reality.

In Rennie’s practice there has always been a consistency, cohesion, and directness. The graphic nature of the work is reflective of both the dock workers union posters of his childhood and the ubiquitous “tags” and “burners” that began to multiply in the streets of his youth. This exhibition affords viewers the opportunity to consider this development and the artistic battles he has waged to highlight injustice and inequality for his people, Aboriginal and the working class.

It is important to note that this retrospective acts as a mid-career survey, Rennie’s future continuing to evolve and morph as more and more exhibition opportunities avail themselves.

Rennie’s international exhibition forays have begun, complemented by a residency at the American Academy in Rome.

Reko rennie biography for kids free: Reko Rennie is an interdisciplinary artist who explores his Aboriginal identity through contemporary media. Through his art, Rennie provokes discussion surrounding Indigenous culture and identity in contemporary urban environments.

One wonders what the next two decades will hold for his practice on the world’s stage.

A significant inclusion in the exhibition is the monumental work REMEMBER ME, , a fifteen meter neon work that responds to the th anniversary of Lieutenant James Cook’s landfall at Botany Bay. The work is a memorial to the Frontier Wars and attempted destruction of Aboriginal identity.

This work punctures our shadows and veils and announces itself boldly and clearly. Rennie’s artistic history equally speaks to our collective past and present through acts of rebellion and memorial. His work harbours an ever-present urgency. A clarion call to remember. Always.

This article was originally published in Artist Profile, issue 68 

EXHIBITION
Rekospective: The Art of Reko Rennie
11 October – 27 January
The Ian Potter Centre: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne