Artist Talk: Deanne Gilson

Join us at Bunjil Place for an artist talk with proud Wadawurrung woman, multidisciplinary visual artist and Blak designer, Dr Deanne Gilson. 

Enjoy an in-conversation style talk between exhibition curator David Sequeira and Gilson, and hear directly from the artist as she discusses her creative practice and shares more about her series Before Joseph Banks, Our Baskets and Plants Held Sacred Knowledge, 2022, featured in Floribunda.

Dr Deanne Gilson is a Proud Wadawurrung woman living on her ancestral Country of Ballarat, Victoria. Having dedicated an entire lifetime to art, her forty-year practice has seen Gilson working in many mediums including painting, clay (sculptural installation), fashion, textile & jewellery design, photography and drawing.

Gilson celebrates her continued living culture through art, reviving traditional Victorian marks used by ancestors, ceremony and oral story telling. Stating that through reclamation, it gives a voice to ancestral knowledges that have been interrupted after settlement and overturns the gaze and objectification of her women, assisting in creating a personal space for healing.

She depicts indigenous plants, trees and the birds from her Creation Story, often incorporating and highlights endangered species and how all is connected to each other.

Her artwork is held in many public and private collections, including the National Gallery of Victoria, the Koorie Heritage Trust and National Wool Museum. 
 

image credit: Deanne Gilson Before Joseph Banks, Our Baskets and Plants Held Sacred Knowledge 2022. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Purchased, Victorian Foundation for Living Australian Artists, 2023 © Deanne Gilson