An interactive longtable event with Nici Cumpston, Ali Gumillya Baker and Claire G. Coleman.

Museums and other colonial institutions are often seen by the western world as holders of knowledge, but for Aboriginal people the relationship is far more complicated both historically and in the contemporary. In this interactive longtable discussion, you will hear from three Aboriginal people on contemporary practices and the future relationships between museums and Aboriginal cultures.

An initiative of the City of Adelaide delivered in partnership with Writers SA

About the Artists

Nici Cumpston is a proud Barkandji artist, curator, writer and educator. Having studied fine arts, specialising in Photography at the University of South Australia, she has worked as a photographic lecturer and wrote and delivered the inaugural course Indigenous Art, Culture and Design at the University of South Australia. Cumpston is the Curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art at the Art Gallery of South Australia and since 2014 has also been the Artistic Director of Tarnanthi Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art with an annual Art Fair and major exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia.

Ali Gumillya Baker is a Mirning woman from the Nullarbor on the West Coast of South Australia. She is a visual artist, performer, filmmaker. She has a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Hons) from the University of South Australia and a Master of Arts (Screen Studies) from Flinders University. Ali is currently working as a lecturer at Yunggorendi First Nations Centre at Flinders University. Her areas of research interest include, colonial archives, memory, intergenerational transmission of knowledge.

Claire G. Coleman is a Wirlomin Noongar woman whose ancestral country is on the south coast of Western Australia. Born in Perth she has spent most of her life in Naarm. Her debut novel Terra Nullius, written while traveling around the continent in a caravan, was published by Hachette in Australia and Small Beer in the US. Terra Nullius won a black&write! Fellowship and a Norma K. Hemming Award and was shortlisted for the Stella Prize and the Aurealis Science Fiction Award among others. The Old Lie (Hachette 2019) is her second novel. Her art criticism has been published in Spectrum, Artlink and Art Collector and in exhibition catalogues for NGV, AGSA and NGA and others. She writes novels, poetry, short-fiction, drama and essay and has featured in the Saturday Paper, the Guardian, Meanjin, Australian Poetry and many others. Lies Damned Lies: A Personal Exploration of the Impact of Colonisation, her first nonfiction book, was published in September 2021 by Ultimo Press.

Venue: Adelaide City Library, 3 Rundle Place, 77 Rundle Mall, Adelaide

If you are unable to make the event after registering, please contact [email protected] to allow someone else to take your place.