About Clothilde Bullen

Clothilde is a Wardandi (Nyoongar) and Badimaya (Yamatji) Aboriginal Curator and is the Curator of Yhonnie Scarce: The Light of Day. Previously, Bullen spent nearly five years as the Senior Curator of First Nations Art at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. She is co-Chair of Indigenous Voices, a critical writing and mentoring project for First Nations writers, a Board Member of the International Association of Art Critics (Australia) and Chair of the Board of the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA).

About Yhonnie Scarce

Yhonnie Scarce was born in Woomera, South Australia, and belongs to the Kokatha and Nukunu peoples.

Scarce’s interdisciplinary practice explores the political nature and aesthetic qualities of glass and photography. Her work illuminates the history and impact of nuclear testing within the Woomera Prohibited Area in South Australia, referencing the ongoing impact of the removal and relocation of Aboriginal people from their homelands as a result. Family history is central to Scarce’s work; the artist revealing narratives critiquing the indentured labour her family members experienced.

Scarce’s professional profile has risen exponentially in recent years. In 2023, her work was exhibited in The Armory Show, New York and in 2022 at IKON Gallery Birmingham, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, and has been acquired by the Foundation Opale, Switzerland. Remember Royalty (2018) was exhibited in A Year In Art: Australia 1992 at the Tate, London and Missile Park (2021) exhibited at Gropius Bau Berlin. Scarce has also held major solo exhibitions at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art and the Institute of Modern Art.

Her work is now held in most State galleries as well as Tate Gallery London, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, TarraWarra Museum of Art, Flinders University Art Museum, Shepparton Art Museum, and the University of South Australia.

About Natalie Harkin

Natalie Harkin is a Narungga poet living on Kaurna Yarta, South Australia, and a Research Fellow at Flinders University, Adelaide. She engages archival-poetic methods to document community Memory Stories and decolonise state archives with an interest in Aboriginal women’s domestic service and labour histories. Her current works centre on creative Indigenous Living-Legacy/Memory Story archiving innovations for our time. Harkin’s words have been installed and projected in mixed-media exhibitions, such as for her creative-arts research collaboration with Unbound Collective. Her manuscripts include Dirty Words (Cordite Books, 2015), Archival-poetics (Vagabond Press, 2019) and APRON-SORROW / SOVEREIGN-TEA (Wakefield Press, 2023).

About Stephen van Leeuwen

Professor Stephen van Leeuwen is a botanical ecologist, executive manager and respected Wardandi Noongar leader with links to Country in the Busselton / Margaret River region. Stephen builds collaborative relationships with Traditional Custodians and other land managers to deliver novel enduring outcomes for biodiversity conservation, bio-cultural land management, and the stewardship of Country.

Stephen is Australia’s first Indigenous Chair of Biodiversity and Environmental Science at Curtin University. His position is supported by Curtin University, BHP and the National Environmental Science Program (NESP). Stephen has a diverse research pedigree developed over 40 years of applied research, principally in the rangelands (Pilbara and Western Desert) and the Kwongan sandplains of the south-west.

Stephen is the Director of the Australian Research Council’s Training Centre for Healing Country at Curtin University, a research and training Centre focused on the restoration economy for Indigenous Australians by Indigenous Australians. Stephen is also Deputy Leader and Senior Indigenous Facilitator for the NESP Resilient Landscapes Hub based at The University of Western Australia.

Stephen is a member of the Federal Environment’s Indigenous Advisory Committee, and Threatened Species Scientific Committee, Chair of the Murujuga Rock Art Sector Reference Group and member of the Botanic Gardens and Park Authority Board. Stephen is also a member of the Academy of Science’s National Committee for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation, a board member of the Ecological Society of Australia and Atlas of Living Australia, a Trustee for The Nature Conservancy, a member of Bush Heritage Australia’s Science and Conservation Committee and a member of the Research Committee supporting the Corporate Research Centre for Transformations in Mining Economies (CRC-TiME). Stephen also Chairs the Karri Karrak Aboriginal Corporation, the Wardandi Noongar Traditional Custodians of the southwest corner of WA.

Stephen also Chairs the Karri Karrak Aboriginal Corporation, the Wardandi Noongar Traditional Custodians of the southwest corner of WA.

About Curtis Taylor

Curtis Taylor is a Martu artist who grew up between Bidyadanga in the Kimberley Region, and Parnngurr in the East Pilbara. Over the past decade Taylor has developed a distinct practice that spans sculptural installation, painting and filmmaking. Through these mediums he presents urgent narratives that speak across generations, exploring ideas about identity, language, cultural practice and responsibility.

Producing stories in Martu Wangka dialect for his community and younger generations and his collaborative approach to filmmaking and storytelling is fundamental to Taylor’s practice. His films have been shown at The National 2019: New Australian Art at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney alongside collaborator Ishmael Marika, and The Sydney Film Festival 2019 with film making partner Nathan Mewett.

Taylor is an integral member of a generation of artists from the Pilbara Region who have asserted the strength of their culture and ongoing connection to country through vital projects such as Yiwarra Kuju: the Canning Stock Route, 2010-2013 (National Museum of Australia and FORM), We don’t need a map: A Martu experience of the Western Desert, 2012- 2016 (Fremantle Arts Centre), In Cahoots: artists collaborate across Country, 2017-2019 (Fremantle Arts Centre). He presented his first major solo exhibition at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts in 2019 and in 2021 held a solo exhibition at Goolugatup Heathcote.