LibGuides: Vernon Ah Kee: Vernon Ah Kee

Video & Audio

Works

Vernon Ah Kee / Kuku Yalanji/Waanyi/Yidinyji/Guugu Yimithirr people / Annie Ah Sam (detail) 2008 / Charcoal, crayon and synthetic polymer paint on canvas / The James C Sourris, AM, Collection. Gift of James C Sourris, AM, through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2012. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Vernon AH KEE / Kuku Yalanji/Yidinyji/Guugu Yimithirr/Waanyi people / QLD b.1967 / Neither pride nor courage 2006 / Charcoal, crayon and synthetic polymer paint on canvas / Triptych: 174 x 240cm (each panel) / The James C Sourris, AM, Collection. Gift of James C Sourris through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2007. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery / © The artist

In his video work, Cant Chant, he tells a fairytale of Aboriginal surfers reclaiming a break, juxtaposed with allusions to racial alienation and the violence of Australia’s Indigenous history. In the next room, the beautifully painted surfboards that appear in the video are hung from the ceiling as if lynched, conversing with provocative black and white wall texts such as “first person” and ‘“hang ten.”

Ah Kee's Barak

Because it is Bitter

2009, synthetic polymer paint on linen; 240.0 x 320.0 cm

Cantchant

2007, colour photograph

Art and Australia Journal

Vol 53 No 2 Issue 1 Extraterritoriality

Vol 45 No 4 Winter 2008 Vernon Ah Kee

Find these books in the Art Department

Current: contemporary art from Australia and New Zealand
Call Number: 709.05 CUR
This book is available in the Art Department.
Brought to light II : contemporary Australian art 1966-2006 : from the Queensland Art Gallery collection by Lynne Seear & Julie Ewington
Call Number: 709.94 QUE
Contemporary Australia: Optimism by John Burningham
Call Number: 709.9407 CON
Ten years of contemporary art : the James C. Sourris AM collection by Julie Ewington
Call Number: 709.94 TEN

Biography and Criticism

Vernon Ah Kee - sovereign warrior
QAGOMA - Unwritten I, II, III
The Guardian review
: racism and politics dominate show that should not be dismissed
Adelaide Biennal 2018
Words come easy to Vernon Ah Kee. They come effortlessly, not only from his life experience as a student during one of Australia’s most corrupt and oppressive state governments, the Bjelke-Petersen era in Queensland, but also through his reading of African–American intellectuals, such as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and James Baldwin. These writers alerted him to the commonality of his experience as a black man in a white society.
Vernon Ah Kee - MCA Australia
Cairns Art Gallery
The Conversation
Aboriginal art: is it a white thing?
Vernon Ah Kee
SMH Sydney Festival
Artist Vernon Ah Kee says he had 'no status' when he was born
Venice Biennale

QUT Profile Vernon Ah Kee

DAAO Bio
NGA unDisclosed
In his four-channel video installation, Tall Man (a reference to Aboriginal Shire Councillor Lex Wotton’s commitment to the rights of Palm Islanders), Ah Kee appropriates footages from mobile phones and camcorders, edited together with archival news footages to reconstruct the unfolding of events – footages that were ironically used in court as evidence to convict Wotton of inciting the Palm Island riot. But in the hands of Ah Kee, they tell a different story of the injustices faced by the Aboriginal community in Australia. In contrast to the video installation where Wotton is seen enraged and devastated in public, Ah Kee depicts Wotton with subtle and gentle lines – a non-threatening, calm and warm-hearted figure.
Austracism NGA

Study Guide: Art and Soul