ARTIST TALK – DARREN BLACKMAN

Join artist Darren Blackman as he discusses his exhibition Absence.

Drawing on personal connections to the Somerset region and his Gureng Gureng/Gangulu and South Sea Islander heritage, Blackman will share insights into the stories, experiences, and cultural practices that inform his striking neon, print, and digital works.

Darren Blackman is a proud Gureng Gureng/Gangalu man from Queensland’s central coast with Kanak South Sea Islander heritage from Vanuatu. Darren grew up in the Sunshine Coast town of Nambour and has been living and working throughout the Far North and Western Queensland since 1995. Darren graduated from the Contemporary Indigenous Art Program at Queensland College of Art, Griffith University in 2024. Touching oral history from his Elders and reworking those messages, Darren channels personal observations and his lived experience, to witness a wide range of Aboriginal perspectives and mainstream political and media inference.

Image by Ketakii Jewson Brown