Charlie Colbung, Noongar artist, was born in 1970 and spent his early life in Mt Barker. He has tertiary qualifications in both dance and art: in 1990 he completed an Associate Diploma of Performing arts in the Dance Development Unit at Clontarf Aboriginal College in Perth, and in 2004 he completed a Diploma in Aboriginal Visual Arts at Great Southern College of TAFE in Mt Barker. In 2007 he received the WA Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Student of the Year award at the Western Australian Department of Education and Training (DET) Training Awards. Colbung works across a range of media including oils, acrylics, watercolours, mixed media, pencil and pastel. His great aunt was Bella Kelly , a renowned landscape painter from Mt Barker associated with the Carrolup school of artists. Colbung spent a lot of time with Kelly during his youth in Mt Barker, painting beside her and being shown how to mix colours and apply the paint. Kelly remained an ongoing source of inspiration for Colbung.
Colbung seeks in his work to explore social and environmental issues of importance to him, aspects of Noongar culture and parts of his own biography. He participated in 'Liminal’, an exhibition at the Vancouver Arts Centre in Albany as part of the 2005 Perth International Arts Festival, the 'Lower Great Southern Noongar Artists Exhibition’ at the same location in 2005 and 2008, 'Hotspot’ at the Residency Museum in Albany (toured within Western Australia by Art on the Move) (2007) and 'The Legacy of Koorah Coolingah’ at the Brisbane Powerhouse (2009). In 2008 Colbung held two solo exhibitions, one at the Mungart Boodja Art Centre, and another, titled 'Bwokkenup-Boodja Mort and Me (Mt Barker country, family and me)’, at the Katanning Town Hall. In that year he also exhibited his work in 'Revealed: Emerging Artists from Western Australia’s Aboriginal Art Centres’ at the Central TAFE Art Gallery, Perth, where he and Alan Kelly represented Mungart Boodja.
Colbung has also conducted art workshops at schools and worked as a dance teacher in the Gnowangerup Community, an arts officer at the Southern Aboriginal Corporation, an Indigenous programs officer at Great Southern TAFE and as an Aboriginal health worker for Great Southern Aboriginal Health Services.
- Writers:
- Fisher, Laura
- Date written:
- 2009
- Last updated:
- 2011
