Great Ocean Speaker Series | 81% Urban: Urban Art Movements and Artist Collectives with Libby Harward

Join artist Libby Harward for this public lecture on First Nations urban art movements and artist collectives in the first installment of the Great Ocean Speaker Series.

This Speaker Series responds to core teachings in Indigenous Art History in the Australia Pacific Region, inviting leading First Nations and Great Ocean artists and curators to campus to speak to diverse themes in contemporary practice.   

This Speaker Series has been developed in collaboration with Dominique Chen (Senior Lecturer, School of Communication and Arts) as part of UQ Art Museum's ongoing work to engage artists, colleagues and students while the Museum relocates. Audiences are warmly invited to join students for these guest lectures, which will take place across campus in September and October 2026. 

12:30pm, Wednesday 9 September, Global Change Institute (building 20) | Room 275

Libby Harward is a Quandamooka (Ngugi) woman from Mulgumpin (Moreton Island) and a contemporary conceptual artist working across installation, performance, video, sound and public art. Her practice interrogates colonial systems of classification, extraction and governance while foregrounding First Nations relationships to Country, knowledge systems and cultural continuity.

Harward’s work has been presented nationally and internationally including at the Gallery of Modern Art (Brisbane), Art Gallery of South Australia (Adelaide), ACE Open (Adelaide), Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane), Gropius Bau (Berlin), and Liquid Architecture (Melbourne / Norway).

She is the Founder and Creative Director of Munimba-ja Arts Centre, a First Nations-led not-for-profit organisation supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists across South East Queensland through exhibitions, residencies, mentorship and professional development programs.

Image: Libby Harward. Photographer: Sarah Osborn