Ngarn Wa'ngal Opening Conversations

Presenters

• More details about Jazz Money

  Jazz Money

  Jazz Money’s poetic practice is interwoven with visual art and film alongside their award-winning books. A proud queer Wiradjuri woman, their work is grounded in storytelling and the expansive possibilities of poetry. Jazz’s debut poetry collection, the best-selling how to make a basket (UQP, 2021) was the 2020 winner of the David Unaipon Award. Their second collection mark the dawn (UQP, 2024) received the 2024 UQP Quentin Bryce Award and the 2025 RAKA Award. Jazz is the author of the illustrated children’s books The Frog’s First Song (UQP, 2025), shortlisted for the CBCA Picture Book of the Year. Their first feature film WINHANGANHA (2023) was commissioned by the National Film and Sound Archive. Jazz’s writing and art has been presented, performed and published around the world to great acclaim.

• More details about Dean Cross

  Dean Cross

  Dean Cross was born and raised on Ngunnawal/Ngambri Country and a Worimi man through his paternal bloodline. He is a paratactical artist interested in collisions of materials, ideas and histories. He is motivated by the understanding that his practice sits within a continuum of the oldest living culture on Earth – and enacts First Nations sovereignty through expanded contemporary art methodologies. He hopes to traverse the poetic and the political in a nuanced choreography of form and ideas. Dean has exhibited widely across the Australian continent and beyond and his work is held by major institutions including the Art Gallery of South Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Heide Museum of Modern Art and the Powerhouse Museum.

• More details about Sophie Gerhard

  Sophie Gerhard

  Sophie Gerhard is co-curator of Ngarn Wa’ngal: Art of the gum tree. She also works as Curator of Australian and First Nations Art at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and is a PhD. Candidate at the University of Melbourne. Her curatorial and research interests surround conversations of national identity and colonialism within Australian art history.

• More details about Julie Gough

  Julie Gough

  Julie Gough is an installation, sound, and video artist, writer, and a curator of First People’s Art and Culture at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in Hobart. Gough’s research and art practice involves uncovering and re-presenting subsumed and often conflicting histories often referring to her family’s experiences as Tasmanian Aboriginal people. Julie is a Trawlwoolway woman whose Briggs-Johnson-Gower family have lived in the Latrobe region of Northwest Lutruwita (Tasmania) since the 1840s, with Tebrikunna being their Traditional Country in far Northeastern Lutruwita.  Julie holds a PhD from the University of Tasmania and has exhibited in more than 200 exhibitions. Gough’s art works are held in many private and most Australian public collections including The National Gallery of Australia, The National Gallery of Victoria, The Art Gallery of New South Wales, The Art Gallery of South Australia, The Art Gallery of West Australia, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, National Museum of Australia, Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery Launceston.

• More details about Lisa Slade

  Lisa Slade

  Lisa Slade is the Hugh Ramsay Chair in Australian Art History in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. In her role, which includes teaching, research and writing, she advocates for Australian art, artists, collections and their histories. Between 2015 and 2024, Lisa was Assistant Director, Artistic Programs at the Art Gallery of South Australia and during this time she curated exhibitions including Vincent Namatjira: Australia in colour, the 14th Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Magic Object, the national touring exhibition Quilty, Sappers & Shrapnel and Kungka Kuṉpu (Strong Women) for Tarnanthi: Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art. Lisa is also a contributor to the publication which accompanies Ngarn Wa'ngal: Art of the gum tree.

• More details about megan evans

  megan evans

  megan evans is an interdisciplinary artist who began her creative career in the 1980s making large political murals. evans’s Scottish and Irish ancestors were early colonisers of Australia, and her practice examines this heritage and its impact in a contemporary setting. In 1983, evans met and later married Aboriginal artist and activist Les Griggs (1958–1994), who was a member of the Stolen Generations. ‘Through my relationship with him, I began to understand the full impact of colonisation in Australia’, says evans. evans has exhibited around Australia and internationally. She has been published widely in books, journals and magazines, and has been awarded several residencies in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

• More details about Jane E. Brown

  Jane E. Brown

  Jane E. Brown is a photographer with an established darkroom practice. Her work is held in the collections of the National Gallery of Victoria and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. As the University of Melbourne's 2025 Miegunyah Creative Fellow, she has brought her longstanding interest in the history, chemistry and alchemy of photography to her most recent body of work. Born in Al Ahmadi, Kuwait, Jane lives and works in Naarm/Melbourne. 

• More details about Janet Laurence

  Janet Laurence

  Janet Laurence is a leading Sydney-based artist who exhibits nationally and internationally. Her practice examines our physical, cultural and conflicting relationship to the natural world. She creates immersive environments that navigate the interconnections between organic elements and systems of nature. Within the recognized threat of climate change she explores what it might mean to heal, the natural environment, fusing this with a sense of communal loss and search for connection with powerful life-forces. Her work is included in museum, university, corporate and private collections as well as within architectural and landscaped public places.

• More details about Alisa Bunbury

  Alisa Bunbury

  Alisa Bunbury is Senior Curator, Grimwade Collection at the University of Melbourne. Previously she worked at the National Gallery of Victoria and the Art Gallery of South Australia. Bunbury is a specialist in colonial art history who seeks to contribute to a deeper understanding of Australia's complex past. She is co-curator of Ngarn Wa’ngal: Art of the gum tree and co-editor of the accompanying publication.