Ron Hurley: Tell the message
Ron Hurley | (Self portrait) c.1975 | Oil on canvas | 107 x 82cm | Hurley Family Collection, Brisbane | © Ron Hurley, 1975. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney, 2009
Bruce McLean
‘I don’t want my kids to watch cartoons; I want them to watch their own history’.1
Introduction
Ron Hurley was a man who made many shirts and wore each of them with pride. Hurley was an advocate, consultant, activist and artist working in multiple mediums — painting, printmaking, pottery, design, sculpture, ceramics and public art. Perhaps because of these many roles, his legacy as an artist is somewhat enigmatic. He created some early masterworks of the urban-based political Aboriginal art movement, but the true depth of his artistic practice remains largely undocumented.
Born in 1946 in Brisbane of the Gooreng Gooreng people, Ron Hurley’s ancestral lands stretch from Gladstone to Bundaberg; he was also a descendant of the Mununjali people from Beaudesert. As one of the first Indigenous artists to have formally studied European art traditions, Hurley was an inspiration and role model to many young Indigenous artists.2
While Hurley was undoubtedly an important artist, he was possibly better known in his lifetime as a tireless advocate for the recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander visual cultures. Hurley held many positions on boards and committees and, in many ways, participated in driving the agenda of Indigenous art both in the artist’s studio and in the boardroom. In 1996, Hurley, along with curator and friend Djon Mundine, was a member of the judging panel of the 13th National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin. He became chair of the Visual Arts Committee of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board of the Australia Council for the Arts between 1993 and 1996 and, in 1996, he was the first Aboriginal person appointed to the Board of Trustees of the Queensland Art Gallery.
His campaign for recognition of Queensland’s Indigenous art and artists was well known, and he was chair of the Indigenous reference panel for the ‘Gatherings’ exhibition, held in association with the 2002 CHOGM (Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting). This panel continued beyond the life of the exhibition, and members lobbied for a separate entity for the management of Indigenous arts affairs. As a direct result, in 2003 the Queensland Government established the Queensland Indigenous Art Marketing and Export Agency (QIAMEA), through the Department of Trade, which has become a valuable resource in raising the profile of Queensland’s Indigenous art and artists.
Hurley exhibited in a number of groundbreaking exhibitions of the early 1990s, such as ‘Aratjarra: Art of the First Australians’, which toured to Germany, London and Denmark; and, in 1994, he travelled to Cuba as a participating artist in the 5th Havana Biennial with ‘Tyerabarrbowaryaou II: I Shall Never Become a White Man’. He also won several awards, including the 1982 Ian Fairweather Memorial Art Prize and, in 1992, he was awarded a residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, by the Australia Council for the Arts.3
This exhibition, ‘Nurreegoo: The Art and Life of Ron Hurley 1946– 2002’, presents some of the most important aspects of the artist’s oeuvre — portraits; representations of Aboriginal heroes, such as the Queensland fast bowler Eddie Gilbert and the Eora resistance hero Pemulwuy; a suite of animal prints presenting Aboriginal language; and cast-metal sculptures and ceramic works. In this exhibition and accompanying publication, we explore Ron Hurley’s life and artistic practice by calling on those who knew Hurley and his motivations...Next
Ron Hurley: Tell the message | Early career | Portraits | Aboriginal heroes: Pemulwuy and Gilbert | Pottery | Cast metal and public sculpture | Animal prints | The final years | End notes
