TONY ALBERT

Kylie Kwong celebrates the individuals helping to grow a stronger community. This month, we meet Kuku Yalanji artist and Fondation Cartier pour Yart contemporain First Nations Curatorial Fellow Tony Albert.

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It’s October 2023 in Mayfair, London. First Nations artist and curator Tony Albert has a hammer in hand and is nailing bits of vintage “Aboriginalia” to the wall of No. 9 Cork Street gallery. He hangs a colonialist painting upside down and emblazons it with skull and crossbones. An old tourist shop map of Australia is painted with a target. And among “Dreamtimey” teaspoons, coasters, and factory-produced boomerangs he scribes the words, “Aliens exist in my backyard”. Take a step back and the objects unite in protest; an attempt to correct the whitewashed record. “There is too much engagement that excludes Aboriginal people from having a voice,” says Albert, grandson to a stolen generation survivor and descendant to the Girramay, Yidinji, Kuku Yalanji and Guugu Yimithirr people in Queensland. “Through this practice I am placing the objects in a position of power… Giving them a voice.”

Step back much further and Albert plays the part of the hammer and nails in his life as a First Nations art trailblazer, forging respectful connections between other Indigenous artists and the contemporary art world. Here in London, where his assemblage is on show, Albert shines his light on other First Nations creatives from around the world through Story, Place, the international show he co-curated