Selected Projects with FIRST NATION Artists Australia 2000 - 2019
The history of indigenous making in Australia is one of the most important in the world with design and many indigenous objects virtually unchanged for ten’s of 1000’s of years. The Dilly bag alone can be traced back some 50,000 years.
Arriving in Australia in 1997, Steve was first introduced to the work of Indigenous artists from across Australia primarily by Bernice Murphy, the Director and Chief Curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney with whom he worked between 1997 and 1999.
From 2000, when Steve moved to the Australian Design Centre (formerly Object), Steve and the curatorial team at the ADC produced numerous exhibitions featuring Indigenous makers from every State and Territory across the country. Steve spent nearly 20 years overseeing and curating projects with hundreds of Australian makers and artists, in a wide range of creative making, from sculptural works to extraordinary woven baskets through to jewellery and the design of fabrics.
Steve's work as a Creative Associate for Place-making (2017 - 2019) at Barangaroo in Sydney (located on the western edge of the CBD, it is a 22-hectare waterfront precinct, valued at over $6 billion, and currently Sydney’s largest redevelopment project to date), gave him the opportunity to develop a range of projects across architecture, film, public art, and sculpture interventions for the Barangaroo Headland Park working primarily with Indigenous artists over this time.
Steve has been involved in the development and production of major exhibitions of Indigenous arts that have toured across Australia and internationally. This included the 2013 exhibition he co-curated at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, in Kanazawa, Japan, which featured over 30 Indigenous Australian artists. This prestigious exhibition included additional work from Japan, the United States and Taiwan.
Selection of Projects
BARANGAROO RESERVE (2017 - 2019)
The Wellama Project (a Gadigal word meaning to come back) a contemporary re-imagining of Welcome to Country, commissioned for the entrance to the Cutaway in Barangaroo Reserve.
It was conceived and developed by Alison Page, an artist and designer that Steve worked with on numerous projects before her Barangaroo commission in 2019. This was one of the major projects realised while Steve was Creative Associate for Place-making (2017 - 2019) at Barangaroo.
The commission was conceived as an invitation to experience the spirit of Gadigal country through art. It was a multi-dimensional installation comprising of a ten-minute audio visual artwork, that invites people into a contemporary ritual to welcome into sea, land and sky country. The work captured the essence of the Welcome to Country by creating a deep emotional experience that transports people through the inclusion of visual, aural, digital and analogue elements.
“The film and the concept around it is about a loop, so the film itself doesn’t have any beginning, middle, or end and it plays with the Aboriginal notion of time, the idea that time is cyclical, that 65,000 years exists right here, right now.” Alison Page
Above, excerpt from The Wellama Project
BARANGAROO RESERVE (2017 - 2019)
The Barangaroo Playscape: Long Lines: Weaving Community and Country
Barangaroo was envisaged as a giant playscape with terraces to climb, coves to swim in, paths to cycle on, and places to explore. Barangaroo commissioned Playscape, was created in collaboration with six Indigenous artists and devised for installation in Headland Park.
The Barangaroo Playscape: Long Lines: Weaving Community and Country
Linking women across multiple communities and identities, the project was to deliver an artwork that highlighted the universality of the Barangaroo narrative, celebrating the vibrancy of Australian Indigenous culture.
The project was to bring together a group of leading female contemporary Indigenous artists, including Gillian Lillian Lee, Mavis Ganambarr, Sharon Egan, Shirley Macnamara, Nicole Monks, and Elisa Jane Carmichael, whose practice included or related to weaving. The artists represented rainforest, river, coastal, inland or urban communities, and each regions’ associated materials and techniques, this was to be a unique opportunity to create not only an artwork, but a national cultural dialogue.
From left to right (Friend of Mavis), Nicole Monks, Sharon Egan, Mavis Ganambarr, Gillian Lillian Lee, Elisa Jane Carmichael, and Shirley Macnamara
The Barangaroo Playscape: Long Lines: Weaving Community and Country
Illustrations of work proposed by Mavis Ganambarr, Shirley Macnamara (two images) and Elisa Jane Carmichael (below)
BARANGAROO RESERVE (2017 - 2019)
The Barangaroo Playscape: Long Lines: Weaving Community and Country
A NOMADIC PLAYSCAPE : The Barangaroo Playscape aspires to redefine what playscapes can be, offering a ‘nomadic’ sculptural play experience which can be moved, rearranged and potentially toured on an as-needs basis. The playscape debut on the Barangaroo headland, with the anticipation that the playscape would subsequently tour to other suitable off-site venues.
Below: Illustration of work proposed by Mavis Ganambarr
Mavis Warrngilna Ganambarr was born in Mata Mata, North East Arnhem Land and now lives on Elcho Island. One of Australia’s leading fibre artists, Warrngilna learned techniques from her grandmother as a young girl , and has since spent years refining techniques and form. Warrngilna’s work ranges from traditional mats and baskets to contemporary soft sculpture and wearable art. Warrngilna has worked collaboratively over the past two decades with artists and is passionate about passing on her knowledge of plants and techniques to a new generation to keep culture strong. Warrngilna’s works have been acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria, the Art Gallery of South Australia and the Kerry Stokes Collection. Ganambarr is an Elcho island Arts artist.
My material is pandanus and bark, and natural dyes from leaves, roots and ash and other sources. My work is a story of weaving and experimenting with dyes and new woven objects. My grandmother used to weave in plain colour, mats to wrap babies in. My mother made mats with dyes, brown and yellow. I wanted to get more colours, to change all the colours, and I experimented with different things. Woven mats were used when women gave birth to babies, as a blanket, a place for mothers and babies, under a shelter on a mat.
My first idea for Barangaroo was to make one thing, a shelter. When I used to travel with my grandmother she would make a shelter from bushes and paperbark underneath. I wanted to make something where all the children would gather, in one place, sheltered. For my playscape, my artwork has many elements. There are places for kids of all ages, places where they can gather and sit, talk, play and laugh. There are elements where kids from 4-6 can run and jump and swing. Or places for free play for everyone. I put the seat elements to look out to the Opera House and islands, like a mother looking out to all the islands, looking after them, in open land, like Mother earth. They are near the waterfront so the children can feel the breeze, and which way the winds blows, hear the birds, and see everything. This is what I see. Mavis Warrngilna Ganambarr
MUSEUM Projects
2nd International Triennale of Kogei in Kanazawa (2013)
This exhibition opened at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Japan featuring the work of over 20 Indigenous Australian artists co-curated by Steven Pozel and Lisa Cahill.
This prestigious Triennale included works from Japan, USA, Taiwan and Australia.
(photo left/above) artist: Lorraine Connelly-Northey
(photo right/below) opening in Kanazawa with artist Danie Mellor’s work in view.
Lola Greeno: Cultural Jewels (2014)
In 2014, ADC presented the major solo exhibition of Lola Greeno as the eighth instalment in its Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft series. This presentation, Lola Greeno: Cultural Jewels, was created in partnership with the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery (QVMAG) in Tasmania and opened in Launceston in 2014, before touring extensively through until 2019.
The exhibition focused on her shellwork, a tradition passed down from her mother and in turn passed to her daughter, as well as her art practice and the importance of her family and community. As the first Indigenous Living Treasure, Lola Greeno: Cultural Jewels included an accompanying monograph, specifically developed digital content, and a film produced by Julie Gough.
(photo right/below) Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery opening viewing 2014
Menagerie: Contemporary Indigenous Sculpture (2009)
ADC’s biggest and most significant exploration of Indigenous sculptural objects was Menagerie: Contemporary Indigenous Sculpture in 2009, a collaboration with the Australian Museum that saw this monumental exhibition jointly exhibited across both institutions.
Conceived by Steven Pozel and co-curated by Brian Parkes and Nicole Foreshew, Menagerie highlighted 33 Indigenous artists in a nationally touring exhibition that eventually returned to the Australian Museum to form part of their permanent collection.
By not focusing on one specific medium, Menagerie brought together a range of objects made from a number of mediums that instead focused on a particular theme; the animal form.
Menagerie was accompanied by a 170-page catalogue and mini-site developed and attached to the ADC website. The exhibition, which toured to 11 national venues including Araluen Art Centre in Alice Springs, Cairns Regional Art Gallery, the Melbourne Museum, Queen Victoria Museum & Gallery in Launceston and Tandanya: National Aboriginal Cultural Institute in Adelaide. It finished it’s tour in 2012 at the National Museum of Australia, by which time it had been seen by more than 200,000 people around the country.
Woven Forms: Contemporary basket making in Australia (2005)
In 2005, Louise Hamby, Lindy Allen, Trish Barnard, Lola Greeno, Virginia Kaiser, Andrew Nicholls and Brian Parkes came together as co-curators of what was an unprecedented survey of Indigenous and non-Indigenous basket makers from across every part of Australia.
Featuring work by 58 artists, Woven Forms surveyed the breadth of weaving and basket making in Australia and offered an incredible opportunity for artistic exchange, with numerous works purchased for private collections and public museums and galleries.
Art on a String (2002)
In 2002 the ground-breaking Art on a String exhibition was curated for ADC by Louise Hamby and Diana Young.
Art on a String was one of ADC’s most ambitious projects, featuring 98 works by 60 Indigenous artists, and it marked a shift for exhibitions of this type and scale, acknowledging individual artists and not just the region they hailed from.
A major catalogue was produced to accompany the exhibition, which toured nationally through 2002 and 2003, including Brisbane, Perth, Alice Springs and Wagga Wagga.