Reko Rennie-Gwaybilla, Kamilaroi (Gamilaraay/Gummaroi) artist, was born in Melbourne in 1974. A self-taught artist, Rennie-Gwaybilla made graffiti art in Melbourne during his teenage years. More recently his spray-painted stencil works have taken the form of wall murals, installations, and canvases pieces. His works have a high-impact aesthetic that derives from their bold colours, compositional drama and his proficiency as a draftsman in the creation of his stencils. Urban Indigenous experience and social justice issues that affect Indigenous Australians are the dominant themes in his work. His works often feature Australian animals and plants as symbolic of his community’s cultural identity, as in the painting Big Red – an image of a Giant Kangaroo – which won the Koorie Heritage Trust Acquisition Award at the 2008 Victorian Indigenous Art Awards. In The Age article 'Red jumps out as clear winner of Koorie Prize’, Rennie-Gwaybilla remarked on his work:
'Whether on the street or in the gallery, art’s about finding the opportunity to get the message out into a wider public forum, to provide access to a certain view’.
Rennie-Gwaybilla was also a finalist in the 2007 Victorian Indigenous Awards, and has participated in exhibitions such as “Nguurramban: Where We Are” at the Linden Centre for Contemporary Art (2007) with Vicki West and Jonathan Jones, and the Melbourne Stencil Festival at the Yarra Sculpture Gallery (2008).
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