Megan Cope is a Quandamooka woman (North Stradbroke Island). She has Bachelor of Visual Arts (Visual Communication) from Deakin University, Victoria. Her site-specific sculptural installations, video work, and paintings and prints investigate issues relating to identity, the environment and mapping practices.
Cope’s work often and examines psychogeographies that challenge the grand narrative of ‘Australia’ and our sense of time and ownership in a settler colonial state.
Cope’s work in Trace is Noogoon (St Helena’s Island), a three colour lithograph. It is drawn from her body of work that investigates the devastation of oyster middens in Quandamooka Country, while also reimagining their place and presence. Cope has also traced the presence of lime kilns (built to burn oyster shell to make lime, and in turn make cement, for new colony building materials), around the shoreline of Moreton Bay. Noogoon was a place where labour, supplied from a penal prison built there, enabled a large lime kiln to operate.
From 2017–19 Cope was the Official Australian War Artist at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra. Cope has undertaken a number of major public art commissions for council, universities, businesses, and corporations including: Monash University, Melbourne Museum, Australian Catholic University, Redland City Council, and Cook University.
Cope’s work has featured in a number of major exhibitions, including: Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Monster Theatres at the Art Gallery of South Australia (2020), The National (2017) at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Defying Empire: 3rd National Indigenous Art Triennial (2017) at the National Gallery of Australia, and Sydney Contemporary’s installation program (2019).
Her work is held in the collections of the National Gallery of Victoria, Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, National Gallery Australia, Monash University Art Collection, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Melbourne Museum, Musées de la Civilisation: Canada, Australian War Memorial, QUT Art Museum, Artbank, Darebin Art Collection.
From 2017–19 Cope was the Official Australian War Artist. Cope has undertaken a number of major public art commissions for council, universities, businesses, and corporations including: Monash University, Melbourne Museum, Australian Catholic University, Redland City Council, and Cook University.
Cope’s work has featured in a number of major exhibitions, including: Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Monster Theatres at the Art Gallery of South Australia (2020), The National (2017) at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Defying Empire: 3rd National Indigenous Art Triennial (2017) at the National Gallery of Australia, and Sydney Contemporary’s installation program (2019).
Her work is held in the collections of the National Gallery of Victoria, Queensland Art Gallery, Gallery of Modern Art, National Gallery Australia, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Melbourne Museum, Musées de la Civilisation: Canada, Australian War Memorial and more.
Unbroken Connections, Canberra Glassworks, Canberra, Fractures and Frequencies, UNSW Galleries, Sydney 2021
