Working across a broad array of media, including spray paint, prints, sculpture, paste-ups, textile foils and installations, Reko Rennie-Gwaybilla straddles the spheres of both street and fine art as well as private and public spaces, forging a new road for contemporary Aboriginal art informed by both his heritage as a Kamilaroi/Gamilaraay/Gummaroi man, and his urban upbringing.
Born in Melbourne in 1974, Rennie-Gwaybilla grew up in the working-class, inner-city suburb of Footscray. Although never formally trained, Rennie-Gwaybilla was surrounded by art growing up as his father is the well-known Aboriginal artist Biggibilla Gummaroi. Inspired by the discovery of the genre-defining book, Subway Art in the local library as a teenager, which showed the possibilities of public expression through graffiti for disaffected youth, he also undertook an important internship on the streets. As a result, graffiti became a life-long passion and important grounding for his future work. Whilst he ended his days as a self-proclaimed ‘young punk,’ in his 20s, his concern for notions of dislocation felt by Aboriginal people in urban environments never left him, as expressed by Rennie-Gwaybilla himself: “I grew up in the city, and I’ve got that connection. I’m an urban Aboriginal dude, I’m comfortable with my identity, and that’s what I try to portray in my work.”
Following the advice of his father to “get a career behind you before you start doing art”, Rennie-Gwaybilla entered the workforce as a print journalist for The Age newspaper, which exposed him to a range of socio-political and economic issues affecting Aboriginal people. Frustrated by the limitations of this medium as a platform from which to convey his views on such problems, Rennie-Gwaybilla turned his attention back to his passion, pulling ‘all-nighters’ to make art whilst also working his day job. His great dedication to his art during this period was reflected by the prolific number of group exhibitions in which he participated: around thirteen in the space of a year alone.
Rennie-Gwaybilla’s artistic development also mirrored his discipline and commitment, and he quickly honed his skills to achieve a highly articulate, intelligent and innovative practice, mixing traditional imagery with contemporary styles, including Op Art, Pop Art and graphic design principles. Granted permission to use the scar tree diamond design of the Kamilaroi people through his familial connections, he sampled this symbology in bright, pop colours, often featuring neon pink. Combining these patterns with intricate stencils of traditional Aboriginal iconography, Australian fauna and flora as well as secular icons, Rennie-Gwaybilla established a personal style that manifested his own sense of Aboriginality in an urban world: a recontextualisation of heritage within contemporary culture.
Informed by both his experience as a journalist and by his family’s struggles, which included his great uncle’s defiance of a racist curfew in Walgett and the Stolen Generation’s ensnarement of his own grandmother only a few decades ago, Rennie-Gwaybilla set out to address contemporary issues affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. With the aim of courting rather than confronting viewers, Rennie-Gwaybilla’s work conveys a political subtext that addresses colonial legacies, deaths in custody, land rights and identity politics, by drawing people in through aesthetically appealing colours complementing his geometric patterns.
A pivotal point in launching Rennie-Gwaybilla’s art career came in 2008 when he won the prestigious Victorian Indigenous Art Award. That same year, he continued to build his profile, participating in a number of notable group exhibitions both internationally and in Australia, including ‘Anonymous Drawings # 9’, Berlin; ‘Gulpa Ngarwul’, Koorie Heritage Trust, Melbourne; ‘Small Works 2008’, Brunswick Street Gallery, Melbourne; and the ‘Linden Postcard Show,’ LINDEN Centre for Contemporary Arts, St Kilda.
Further awards and residencies were soon to follow; Rennie-Gwaybilla was granted a coveted Australia Council funded residency at the Cite International des Arts in Paris, listed as a finalist in the Royal Bank of Scotland Emerging Artist Award, and awarded an arts grant by the City of Port Philip in 2009. He left his mark on Paris, and in 2010 was the first Australian artist to receive an invitation to produce a site-specific mural in Paris by the Le M.U.R. association, regarded as one of the highest honours in the street art community.
Holding his first solo shows in 2009 at Dianne Tanzer gallery and the Koorie Heritage Trust in Melbourne, Rennie-Gwaybilla went on to regularly exhibit at Dianne Tanzer and in private and public galleries nationally, including at Tandanya Artspace in South Australia in 2011 and at Black Magic at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. His commercial and critical success culminated in the invitation to exhibit at the SCOPE Art Fair in New York in 2012.
Rennie-Gwaybilla’s appreciation of issues surrounding the world’s first peoples extended to undertaking certain international collaborations, including a project at the Museum of Contemporary Native Art in Santa Fe in 2010 with his friend and fellow Native American Indian artist, Frank Buffalo Hyde, and an installation with Indonesian artist Buyangan Urban at Gallery Salihara in Jakarta in 2011.
Rennie-Gwaybilla has continued to exhibit in numerous group shows, including, most significantly, ‘WATTLE’ in the Cat Street Gallery in Hong Kong in 2011, the Australian Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo in 2010 and in 2013 in ‘My Country, I Still Call Australia Home: Contemporary Art from Black Australia’ at the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane. In 2012 Rennie-Gwaybilla was shortlisted for his portrait of Hetti Perkins in arguably the most important Australian group show, the Archibald Prize.
From humble beginnings as a clandestine street artist, Rennie-Gwaybilla has come to be regarded as a valuable public artist, having been the recipient of several prominent commissions including the 3CR Mural Project in 2010, funded by Arts Victoria and the Victorian Government, and the ‘Always was, Always will be’ building facade in Taylor Square as part of the City of Sydney’s Streetware program for 2012. Due to its highly favourable reception, this facade has become a long-term addition to the streetscape.
Rennie-Gwaybilla’s work is held in many significant private and public collections, including the Art Gallery of Western Australia, the Koorie Heritage Trust in Melbourne, ArtBank, City of Yarra and the New Contemporary Art Museum, soon to be completed in Nanjing, Jiangsu, China. His paste-ups also grace public walls all over the world from Paris to Jakarta, New York to Mumbai and Berlin where you may find his striking Big Red, the infamous, anthropomorphic, proud pink roo: a symbol of resistance and testament to the survival of Aboriginal culture and its people. It stares down romanticized stereotypes in an urban landscape, marking territory.
Emerging from the graffiti subculture to become an internationally renowned Aboriginal artist with many awards and residencies to his name, an important outcome for Rennie-Gwaybilla in his success is his ability to give back to his community, committing to various workshops with aboriginal youths and talking with them about issues of identity in an urban context. In 2012 Rennie-Gwaybilla conducted a series of street art workshops with Aboriginal youths to reinvigorate an iconic terrace at ‘the Block’ in Redfern. Collaborating with several young artists on a mural that looked at the past, the present and the future of the area, Rennie-Gwaybilla not only provided participants with the ‘tricks of the trade,’ to realise their artistic intentions, he also demonstrated the importance of belief in yourself, goals and the role of art as a ‘way out’ and powerful tool for reinterpreting and expressing aboriginality.
Rennie-Gwaybilla’s art, which has followed a trajectory characterized by discipline, experimentation and innovation, has produced a highly intelligent language that successfully reinterprets aboriginal identity within a urban world. The ubiquity of Rennie-Gwaybilla’s message of remembrance, respect and revision for a living culture has continued to develop with his commitment to community programs and allegiance to a joyful style that shines a bright light on serious issues; they glow neon in contemporary consciousness.
- Writers:
- Fisher, Laura
- Date written:
- 2011
- Last updated:
- 2014
