Vernon Ah Kee (b.1967) of the Kuku Yalandji, Waanji, Yidinji and Gugu Yimithirr peoples of North Queensland, sharply critiques Australian culture in his video, charcoal drawing, and text based works. He studied in the Contemporary Australian Indigenous Art program at Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, completing a Doctor of Visual Art.
In his text based works, Ah Kee harnesses words to do the talking. He uses sharp firing text that draws viewers in with the power of a bill board. Ignoring the accepted limits of word integrity, Ah Kee’s text has us reading and rereading the the flowing text to unblurr meaning. It is a successful ploy because it is the reader who has to the recovery, often revealing the wilfully ‘hidden discourse of racism’ in Australia.
Ah Kee’s work in Trace, hangten is drawn from a large body of work undertaken in response to the Cronulla Riots that took place in 2005 between Anglo-Australian and Middle Eastern Australians. At that point the idea of the beach as the site of endless recreation was upturned to a contested space epitomised in the chant ‘we were born here; you flew here’. The irony was not missed by Ah Kee who examined the wider field of surfing culture in the light of indigenous history and culture. hangten in surfing culture denotes prowess in manoeuvring a surf board but also a greeting between surfers, to take it easy. In race relations it is a cruel irony.
Ah Kee’s work has been featured in a number of significant national and international exhibitions, including ‘Revolutions: Forms that turn’, the 16th Biennale of Sydney (2008); ‘Once Removed’, Australian Pavilion, Venice Biennale (2009); ‘Ideas of Barack’, National Gallery of Victoria (2011); ‘Tall Man’, Gertrude Contemporary (2011); ‘Everything Falls Apart’, Artspace Sydney (2012); ‘unDisclosed’: 2ndNational Indigenous Art Triennial’, National Gallery of Australia (2012); ‘My Country: I Still Call Australia Home’, Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art (2013); and ‘Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art’, National Gallery of Canada (2013).
Ah Kee has work in the following collections: National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada, National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Museum of Contemporary Art, Artbank, Sydney, University of Queensland Art Museum, University of Technology, Sydney, Queensland University of Technology Art Museum, Perc Tucker Regional Gallery, Townsville, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Victoria, Gold Coast City Gallery, Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, Sprengel Museum, Germany, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA, David Teplitzky and Peggy Scott Collection, Hong Kong, Kluge-ruhe Collection, University of Virginia, USA
