BRONWYN BANCROFT: POWER, PASSION, POLITICS

A Bundjalung artist of the Djanbun clan, Bronwyn Bancroft has been making her distinctive mark on the Australian arts for over 30 years. A practising artist, she works across a wide range of mediums, from painting and collage to literature and textile and fashion designs. After establishing her fashion outlet Designer Aboriginals in 1985, Bancroft became the first Australian designer to be invited to show her work in Paris. Not content with success in the fashion and art worlds (her paintings are held by the National Gallery, AGNSW and Art Gallery of WA), Bancroft went on to become a founding member of the Boomali’s Aboriginal Artist Co-Op, a watershed organisation in the contemporary urban Indigenous art movement.

Throughout her career, she has continued to produce a well-regarded body of artworks and fashion, as well as remained passionate and active in community activism (particularly about the rights of Aboriginal artists) and as an arts administrator, sitting on and directing countless Indigenous and non-Indigenous art boards over the last three decades. Power, Passion, Politics, currently showing at CarriageWorks, is a retrospective of Bancroft’s work, and the first in-depth examination of this extraordinary artist. Mainly featuring her paintings, the collection also has examples of her designs, and archival footage and photographs.

Until Mar 17, CarriageWorks, 245 Wilson St, Eveleigh, free, 8571 9099, carriageworks.com.au