Join us for a panel discussion and unboxing party by Sam Harrison that will explore the development of his exhibition, and the themes intertwined throughout Fair Dinkies.

Panelists will include Sam Harrison, Keemon Williams & Elena Dias-Jayasinha, and be moderated by Jordan Azcune. Read more below about each panelist.

Blind boxes that were purchased on exhibition opening and throughout the exhibition will be available to collect and open on Thursday 10th April 2025.

Snowy River Toy Inc. is pleased to present its newest line of toy collectables in celebration of Australia’s rich cultural diversity!

Fair Dinkies is a series of collectable Koalas ironically tasked with representing the vast cultural diversity within Australia.

Simmering beneath the façade of playful innocence, along with promises of equality, safety, and prosperity, is a world of nuanced cultural and political tensions—a friction that keeps its inhabitants suspended in a moral and ethical limbo.

At the exhibition's core, it is a statement that diversity is necessary to create ‘Australian-ness’. As a well-meaning commercial product by fictional manufacturers, Snowy River Toy Inc., the Koalas are destined to fail at this task.

Within the frame of the Fair Dinkies store, you are invited to participate in the parody of ‘the great Australian mixing pot’ to explore and question the motivations and mechanics of Australia’s unique form of social conformity.

PANELISTS

Sam Harrison is a proud Kamilaroi/Wiradjuri artist working in Meanjin. As a figurative painter combining historical, cultural and contemporary imagery Harrison holds the belief that an artist’s role is to research and understand the morals, motives and circumstances that inform identity. His practice explores the hypocrisies and idiosyncrasies of local, national and global histories to find stories that are worth telling.

Keemon Williams (b.1999) is a queer Meanjin (Brisbane) based artist of Koa, Kuku Yalanji and Meriam Mir descent. He utilizes an array of mediums old and new to expand his relationships with location, personal histories and cultural plasticity. Through practice he forges belonging within all parts of the self. Keemon is currently an Assistant Curator within the Indigenous Australian Art at QAGOMA.

Elena Dias-Jayasinha is an emerging Sri Lankan-Australian curator and art historian based in Brisbane. Her interests include the intersection of art and science, emotional perceptions of space, and the complexities of cultural identity. At the core of her practice is a belief in art as a tool to build empathy, strengthen community, and initiate change. Elena studied Art History and Japanese at the University of Queensland and was the 2020 recipient of the Paula and Tony Kinnane Art History Scholarship and recently curated the exhibition Music of Spheres, at the University of Queensland Art Museum, 2020–21. Elena is currently Exhibition Assistant at the Museum of Brisbane.

MODERATOR

Jordan Azcune (he/him) is a contemporary artist and educator with a multifaceted arts practice. A QUT graduate, he has accumulated over a decade of experience across artist-run initiatives, public institutions, commercial spaces, and regional galleries. As an artist, Jordan’s work employs sculptural techniques using beeswax and clay to explore queer abstraction, drawing influence from architecture, theology, and the natural world and is characterized by experimentation with form and scale.

DETAILS

WHEN: 6–8pm, Thursday 10 April 2025
WHERE: Outer Space Main Gallery, Judith Wright Arts Centre, 420 Brunswick St, Fortitude Valley⁠, Meanjin/Brisbane.
ACCESSIBILITY: The gallery is wheelchair accessible from the Brunswick St entrance. There will be amplified sound, and ample seating available. If you have any specific access needs, please either email admin@outerspacebrisbane.org or send us a message on Instagram.

This is a free public program. More information on the exhibition here.

Image by and courtesy of the artists.