These Biographies relate to participants in the Field Trips, Artist Residencies and Exhibition.
Vernon Ah Kee
Born 1967 in Innisfail, North Queensland, Vernon Ah Kee is a descendant of the Kuku Yalandji, Waanji, Yidindji, Koko Berrin and Gugu Yimithirr peoples, and has Chinese heritage.
His multidisciplinary practice spans drawing, text-based works, installation, video and painting, and interrogates the legacies of colonialism, racism and the historical representation of Aboriginal people. Through portraiture, text and graphic imagery, Ah Kee challenges stereotypes and exposes the structures of power that shape Indigenous experience.
Alongside his studio practice, Ah Kee has been a prominent voice in political and cultural debates, using art as a form of critical commentary and resistance. He is a founding member of the influential Aboriginal artist collective proppaNOW, based in Meanjin/ Brisbane.
Ah Kee’s work has featured in significant national and international exhibitions, including Rememory, Biennale of Sydney (2026); Ever Present: First Peoples Art of Australia, Auckland Art Gallery (2023); A Year in Art Australia 1992, TATE Modern, London (2021); cantchant, Art Gallery of Alberta (2019); will i live, Apartment der Kunst, Munich (2017); Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art, National Gallery of Canada (2013); unDisclosed: 2nd National Indigenous Art Triennial, National Gallery of Australia (2012).
For more information: https://milanigallery.com.au/artists/vernon-ah-kee/
Robert Andrew
Robert Andrew is a descendant of the Yawuru people, whose Country encompasses the lands and waters in and around Rubibi (the town of Broome) in the Kimberley Region, Western Australia. Born in Perth in 1965, he lives and works in Meanjin/ Brisbane. Andrew’s practice speaks to the past yet articulates a contemporary relationship to his Country. Working across installation, sculpture and digital media, he often combines technology and programmable machinery with earth pigments, ochres, rocks and soil. He seeks to make visible the interconnected relationships between land, water, sky and living systems, and reveal historical, cultural and personal events and narratives that have been buried or obscured by dominant Western frameworks.
Andrew’s work has been presented in major exhibitions in Australia and internationally, including the Aichi Triennale (2025); Yokohama Triennale (2020); The National: New Australian Art, Art Gallery of New South Wales (2019); Colony: Frontier Wars, National Gallery of Victoria (2018); and Ars Electronica (2017). His work is held in major public collections across Australia.
Andrew has a Doctorate of Visual Arts (2019) and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Griffith University, Brisbane.
For more information: https://www.robotandrew.com/
Fang, Chun-wei (方鈞瑋)
Fang Chun-wei (方鈞瑋) is a Taiwanese anthropologist, curator and museum professional specialising in Indigenous cultures and Austronesian studies. He is Head of the Division of Exhibition and Education at the National Museum of Prehistory and served as the Taiwan Project Partner for the Australia–Taiwan Indigenous Art Exchange (2021-2024). He holds a PhD from the Australian National University (2016) and is an Adjunct Associate Professor at National Taitung University.
Fang has conducted research with Austronesian communities across Taiwan and internationally and has played an active role in Indigenous museum development, exhibition-making and cultural interpretation, with a particular focus on cultural revitalisation. As a curator, he has led and collaborated on major exhibitions including Contested Frames: Taiwan’s Indigenous Peoples Confronting the Colonial Gaze (2025); the Austronesian Hall permanent exhibition at the National Museum of Prehistory (2023); and First Wave: Contemporary Australian and Taiwanese Indigenous Fashion Exhibition (2022).
He is also the editor of Biru na Tminum Atayal: Weaving Wisdom of the Atayal People in Ta’an River Areas (2016) and Reappearance of Atayal: Catalogue of the Reproduction of Pan-Atayal Traditional Costumes (2008).
Leah King-Smith
Leah King-Smith is a Bigambul artist born in 1957 in Gympie, Queensland. She has an extensive career as a photo and digital media artist and is best known for her multi-layered “photographic compositions”, particularly the acclaimed series ‘Patterns of Connection’ exhibited across Australia and internationally. In this series, King-Smith recontextualises nineteenth-century archival photographs of Aboriginal people —originally produced by European photographers—seeking to restore dignity and humanity to the subjects and repositioning them beyond colonial narratives.
Immersive storytelling is central to her practice. Her recent work incorporates 3D animation and digital technologies to create layered narratives exploring memory, intergenerational histories and cultural resilience. She also adopts a transdisciplinary approach, collaborating with Indigenous and non-Indigenous practitioners across diverse fields, including music, dance and poetry.
King-Smith’s work is held in major public and private collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of New South Wales, and Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art.
King-Smith holds a Master of Arts by research (2001) and a PhD in visual arts (2006). She was a Senior Lecturer and Academic Lead (Indigenous) at Queensland University of Technology until 2025 when she left to focus on her art practice.
Sophie McIntyre
Sophie McIntyre is a Senior Lecturer at Queensland University of Technology and a curator specialising in Asia-Pacific art and museology, with a focus on Taiwan. She has lived and worked in Taiwan, China and Aotearoa/ New Zealand, and is the Project Lead of the Australia–Taiwan Indigenous Art Exchange. She earned her PhD at the Australian National University (2013) and has published widely. She is the author of Imagining Taiwan: The Role of Art in Taiwan’s Quest for Identity (Brill, 2018) and Yao Jui-chung (Scheidegger & Spiess, 2023).
McIntyre has curated over 30 exhibitions focusing on Asia-Pacific art, many of which toured Australia, Singapore and Aotearoa/ New Zealand. These include, Ink Remix: contemporary art from mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong (2015-2017); Penumbra: New Media Art from Taiwan (2007); Islanded: Contemporary art from New Zealand, Singapore and Taiwan (2005 – co-curated with Lee Weng Choy and Eugene Tan); Tatau: Pe’a Photographs by Mark Adams and Measina Samoa Stories of the Malu by Lisa Taouma (2003 – co-curated with Peter Brunt); and Face to Face: contemporary art from Taiwan (1999-2000).
She has also received major awards, grants and fellowships, including the inaugural Sir Edward Weary Dunlop Asialink Fellowship (University of Melbourne), and has received grants from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, Taiwan’s Ministry of Education and its Ministry of Culture.
Akac Orat (Chen, Hao-yi 陳豪毅)
Born in 1984, Akac Orat (Chen, Hao-yi 陳豪毅) is a Puyuma and Amis artist, curator, and educator based in Chenggong on Taiwan’s east coast. He began his curatorial practice while studying at Taipei National University of the Arts, co-founding PingPong ArtSpace and curating experimental exhibitions such as Tag Alley, Unconditioned Miscellaneum, and Live Ammo at Taipei MOCA. His work explores the intersections of art and everyday life, often transforming exhibitions into immersive, participatory events that engage community, artisans, and non-artists alike.
Orat has also worked extensively in education, teaching in Taitung for six years and developing cross-disciplinary projects that integrate traditional Indigenous knowledge with contemporary art practice. In recent years, he has focused on craft and land-based practice, building a traditional Amis house, producing woven rattan works, and conducting immersive field research with elders, emphasising hands-on knowledge that cannot be captured through documentation alone.
Working across curating, craft and education, Orat creates platforms for dialogue between tradition, material culture, and contemporary art. His practice fosters local engagement while exploring broader questions of community, cultural heritage, and creative practice.
Mandy Quadrio
Mandy Quadrio is an artist and academic, and a Trawlwoolway clanswoman from Tebrakunna Country on the far northeast coast of Loetrouwitter / Tasmania. She also belongs to the Laremairremener clan of the Oyster Bay Nation and is of Anglo-Irish heritage and is currently based in Meanjin/ Brisbane.
Working across sculpture, installation, photography, mixed media, and video, Quadrio interrogates racist categorisations, historic denial, and imposed invisibility of Aboriginal identity. Her practice is driven by materiality, particularly the industrial material of steel wool. By manipulating its abrasive fibres—traditionally used to scrub things away—she reclaims and foregrounds culture. Combined with organic materials, such as ocean-derived bull kelp, ochre and natural fibres, her works create layered dialogues that articulate contemporary Palawa expression.
Her work has been widely exhibited in Australia and internationally, including kukunna wurraweena, Institute of Modern Art (2026); And Still I Rise, Art Gallery of New South Wales (2025); Objects of Culture and Science, Australia and Sweden (2023); TarraWarra Biennial (2021), and Rite of Passage, Queensland University of Technology Art Museum (2020).
Quadrio holds a Doctor of Visual Arts (2021) and teaches at Queensland College of Art and Design, Griffith University.
For more information: https://www.mandyquadrio.com.au/about/
Ciwas Tahos (Lin, Anchi 林安琪)
Ciwas Tahos (Lin, Anchi 林安琪) is a Taiwanese artist of Atayal and Hō-ló descent whose interdisciplinary practice spans performance, digital media, installation, and ceramics. Working between Taiwan and Naarm/Melbourne, her practice draws on Indigenous knowledge, personal narrative and embodied experience to explore questions of identity, belonging and cultural continuity.
She often uses her own body as a central element in her work, creating performative and multimedia projects that reflect on the intersections of Indigenous identity, language, gender and contemporary life. Through experimental forms and immersive installations, she examines how traditional knowledge and storytelling can be reimagined within contemporary art and digital environments.
Tahos holds an MFA in New Media Art from Taipei National University of the Arts and a BFA from Simon Fraser University. Her work has been presented in exhibitions and festivals internationally, including: Briser la Glace / Splitting Ice, Quebec Biennale (2026); Sharjah Biennial (2025); Hawai‘i Triennial (2025); Taiwan Austronesian Art Triennial (2024); and Ars Electronica (2023). She received the Pulima Art Award Biannual Prize (2023) and the Leslie-Lohman Museum Artist Fellowship (2024–25), and has undertaken artist residencies in Berlin, Vietnam, United States, and Japan.
For more information: https://ciwastahos.art/ABOUT
Yuma Taru (尤瑪•達陸)
Yuma Taru (尤瑪•達陸) is an Atayal artist and cultural practitioner from Miaoli County, and one of Taiwan’s most internationally recognised Indigenous artists. Born in 1963, she holds an MA in Textiles and Clothing from Fu Jen Catholic University (1998). In 2016, Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture recognised her as a preserver of Atayal Indigenous culture, awarding her the National Living Treasure title.
Since the mid-1990s, Yuma Taru has dedicated her practice to researching, revitalising, and teaching Atayal weaving traditions. In 2003, she founded the Lihang Workshop (野桐工坊), a creative studio and social enterprise committed to sustaining and promoting Atayal cultural knowledge. Her work draws on extensive field research in Atayal communities and studies of historical textiles in museum collections in Taiwan and internationally.
Through her contemporary fibre practice, she reinterprets Atayal weaving traditions, drawing on traditional materials, dyeing and weaving techniques to create innovative contemporary artworks, while fostering new generations of practitioners.
Her work has been exhibited internationally, including the 14th Gwangju Biennale: Soft and Weak like Water (2023); Taiwan Art Biennial (2022), Jakarta Biennale (2021), the Asia Pacific Triennial (2021), and Sakàhan: International Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Canada (2013).
For more information: https://www.lianggallery.com/en/?portfolio=yuma-taru; https://folkartmarket.org/ifamartiststories/yuma-taru-iihan-studio
Judy Watson
Judy Watson was born in Mundubbera, Queensland. Her Aboriginal matrilineal family is from Waanyi country in north-west Queensland. Working across painting, printmaking, drawing, sculpture, video and installation, Watson’s practice evolves through engagements with site and memory, tracing emotional and physical topographies connected to places and histories. Her work addresses the complex legacies of colonialism and their impact on Indigenous communities exploring themes of cultural survival, remembrance, preservation and recovery.
Watson has exhibited extensively, nationally and internationally, since the 1980s. Most recent international exhibitions include: Briser la Glace / Splitting Ice, Quebec Biennale (2026); Echoes Unveiled: Art by First Nations Women from Australia, Artizon Museum, Tokyo (2025); 14th Gwangju Biennale: Soft and Weak like Water (2023); and Réclaimer la terre – Reclaim the earth: Megan Cope, D Harding, Judy Watson, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2022). She co-represented Australia at the 1997 Venice Biennale. Major solo exhibitions of her work have been presented at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (2018) and the Queensland Art Gallery (2024). Her work is held in major Australian and international collections, and she has received numerous awards and public art commissions.
Watson is an Adjunct Professor at Griffith University and received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Queensland in 2018.
For more information: https://milanigallery.com.au/artists/judy-watson/