Born 1993 in Moruya, Australia
Lives and works in Naarm / Melbourne, Australia
Wiradjuri and Ngiyampaa

Across illustrations, zines and comics, Charlotte Allingham creates graphic works deeply reflective of her thoughts connecting to culture, identity, the broader impacts of colonisation and how one can activate change.

At the centre of the frame, Allingham’s works often place Indigenous women within landscapes, with animals, at front-line protests or in intimate conversations. These deeply personal scenes present clear definitions of self-empowerment and freedom, offering guidance, suggesting actions and philosophies of how histories can be re-read, and how the individual’s personal aches can be shared as a moment of relief and acknowledgement.

The works in this installation were commissioned to respond to the seven themes of NIRIN. Using only Wiradjuri words, these works beautifully unfold the way these themes are interrelated and centred in an interconnected way of being.

DHAAGUN | My ancestors, roots steaming from the soles of my feet, deep deep. red dirt.

BAGARAY-BANG | Allowing my heart to feel the wind, the way it whispers through my pain, I hear the broken pieces coming together. one piece. two pieces.

YIRAWY–DHURAY | My body needs. My soul needs. Connect. Connect. I hear you.

GURRAY | In this I will come through, powerful and brave. Through this I will become. Transcend this. Transform aspects to grow another.

NGAWAAL-GUYUNGAN | Resist. My voice gives home to my ideas, to stand against the colony, and will not falter, for I am who I am. My father's daughter. the design of my ancestors.

BILA | The river that flows through my country, like the blood. Keep me surviving. I hear you, just as my grandmother does from her house. I am far, but you are here. I hear you.

Charlotte Allingham is a 26-year-old Wiradjuri, Ngiyampaa woman from New South Wales, with family ties to Condobolin and Ivanhoe. She currently lives in Naarm, creating Illustrations about her culture and identity, and the impacts of colonisation.

Added by Naomi

Born 1987 in Tamale, Ghana
Lives and works in Tamale, Accra and Kumasi, Ghana

“Freedom and Justice for all including the so called ‘non-life’. For it is within these moments that we shift perceptions and expand upon our values of respect. Let’s aim to truly democratise form and the many hands they emerge from.”

Ibrahim Mahama’s largescale, immersive installation No friend but the mountains 2012-20, 2020 dresses the entirety of the interior Turbine Hall at Cockatoo Island with jute sacks. A crowded patchwork of rich, brown colour and rough and smooth planes, together their marked surfaces mime the gritty materiality and architecture of the former shipyard and penal colony, to reference and stir the histories of labour and incarceration that lay dormant on the island. This work continues Mahama’s material investigation into labour, economic history and production. Taking an almost forensic approach, the artist sees the surfaces of these materials as holding and bearing the physical markers, smells and traces of the networks and industries they previously moved through. No friend but the mountains 2012-20 privileges the private lives of ordinary materials, and their ability to communicate urgent and complex histories to us, expanding our knowing of and being within an interconnected and inherently entangled world.

Added by Naomi