When the 1967 referendum gave First Nations people the vote in Australia, artist Reko Rennie wasn’t born but he gets the impression that his people were tongue-tied.
By the time he started painting at the age of 12, he was ready to adopt the political position of the streets. The spray can became his message stick as he set out to change history by crowning himself.
A new retrospective of Rennie’s 20-year career opened at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia last week with a saturated, in-your-face, proud declaration of identity.
As a Kamilaroi man, Rennie is revelling in the chance to speak for himself and he loves using trigger words that point at the politics of the past.
His grandmother was one of the Stolen Generation, he said last week at the opening of his show. She was removed from her family at the age of eight, and worked as a domestic “slave” on stations in northern New South Wales. She brought him up while his mum worked “seven days a week”.
REKOSPECTIVE is a powerful exhibition, a mash-up of symbols, graffiti in neon, totem poles in bling, words cut up, politics on the prowl with multiple narratives weaving their way through more than 100 exhibits and four rooms of multi-media experience.
The curators have gone for impact rather than chronology and this captures the spirit of this urban First Nations dance with the man at the centre staying on message.
Standing in the gap between a 2023 painting of the Yes referendum, that denied First Nations people a voice in Parliament, and a 2017 painting of the 50th anniversary of the referendum for the vote, Rennie gave voice to his politics.
“Fifty years on there are still huge incarceration rates. All these potential issues have yet to be worked out. Our generation has no fears of speaking out. In the time back then people were jailed or incarcerated,” he said.
YesMotherFuckerYes makes a statement about art with a “bit of colour and a bit of text” and Rennie is enjoying the limelight. At 50, he looks younger than his years, and is ready to take a stand.
“I never wanted to work with ochre,” he said. “The majority of us live in urban environments rather than on the fringe of the desert. If you look at Aboriginal identity, it’s very diverse.”
In a moody video piece that is part of the exhibition, he drove a car into a Melbourne night, and the burn-outs and wheelies defined his rites of passage … into the graffiti scene of the western suburbs.
“At high school my experience from art teachers was not encouraging,” he told Australian Arts Review in a short interview after the preview. “I’d been painting for eight years by the time I was 20.” So he studied journalism instead.
That early training on the street taught Rennie the power of symbols and shaped a practice that deals with politics in a direct and refreshing way. If it’s worth saying, why not light it up in neon or choose a mirror backing?
Rennie’s beautiful tag is represented both in 3D in Yaliwunga and in neon pieces from 2013. The crown symbol pays homage to his roots in Aboriginal sovereignty and the politics of fellow graffiti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.
REKOSPECTIVE: The Art of Reko Rennie is on display at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Fed Square, Melbourne, until 27 January 2025. Free Entry. For more information, visit: www.ngv.vic.gov.au for details.
Images: Installation view of REKOSPECTIVE: The Art of Reko Rennie – photo by Rhonda Dredge | Reko Rennie at the Media Preview of REKOSPECTIVE: The Art of Reko Rennie – photo by Rhonda Dredge
Words: Rhonda Dredge