I want to show you some of Kent Morris’s public art because he was among the Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture 2023 finalists. Morris is a Barkindji man living in Yaluk-ut Weelam country in Naarm (Melbourne) and a Victoria College of the Arts graduate. I first met Morris as the director of The Torch, an organisation providing cultural and artistic mentoring to First Nations people impacted by incarceration in Victoria. I mention his work with The Torch because a good artist is involved with the community; they do more than make things. Morris has work in the NGV’s collection and is regularly exhibited in other galleries, but his public art is the focus of this blog post.
Morris’s art concerns the continuing presence and patterns of Aboriginal history, culture, and knowledge in the contemporary Australian landscape. It also looks at the interaction of native birds with the built environment, in other words, how they respond to colonialism. So, although it is pleasant to see his digitally collaged photographs in the comfort of a climate-controlled art gallery, it is more relevant to his art to see them around the city.
Images, like his “Never Alone” billboard or his Melbourne Art Tram for the 2019 Melbourne International Arts Festival. His photomontage of mirrored images of a bird, Sovereign Seconds, on the hoardings around the City Square as the metro tunnel station is built. In my local area, his mural with magpies is at Garrong Park in Brunswick, Ancestral Connections – The Ties That Bind, 2021. His design was on the surface of the basketball area across the road from Moreland station. But that’s only what I’ve seen; his website has images of work across the city, from murals in Boronia to billboards in Moonee Valley. These images, with their birds and geometric patterns, represent a continuing Indigenous presence in the urban landscape by having a continued visual presence in the city.
I hope Morris will follow in the footsteps of Maree Clarke (the winner of the Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture 2023) and become a great cultural worker. Congratulations to the other finalists in the Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture 2023: Vipoo Srivilasa and Joy Zhou (I feel slightly negligent that I haven’t written about either Srivilasa or Zhou – but I’m just one person).
Black Mark 