Panel Discussion: International & National Opportunities for Aboriginal Artists

Emilia Galatis is a curator, art consultant, creative producer and arts development specialist with over 18 years’ experience working across urban and remote areas. She has lived in the Western Desert, Pilbara and Kimberley and was the arts and business manager for Warakurna Artists in the Ngaanyatjarra Lands. After that, Emilia was the producer of Revealed 2016 and 2017 for Fremantle Arts Centre and the co-curator of Desert River Sea at the Art Gallery of WA in 2019.

Emilia has received three international scholarships including a Churchill Fellowship undertaken in 2022, developing international creative business opportunities for WA artists. Her clients are museums, peak bodies and Indigenous-owned arts organisations, building pathways for artists to exhibit with maximum impact. She is the founder and director of the textile business Flash Minky and commercial gallery concept: EG Projects, exhibiting WA artists nationally and internationally. 

Tyrown Waigana is an artist and designer with connections to Wardandi Noongar people of the south-west, Yawuru people from the Kimberley region and the Ait Koedhal clan on Saibai Island in the Torres Strait. Following the coast Waigana’s heritage stretches almost half the country and is deeply connected to the oceans. Tyrown was born and raised in Fremantle, where his passion for art was fostered by his family and surrounding. He grew up admiring family members who made art, the cartoons he saw on TV and a curiosity around creating.

Tyrown’s practice explores the everyday myth, gaps in communications and rhetoric around Indigenous identity while putting a humorous spin on much of his work. He enjoys pushing himself creatively both in concept, topic and outcome. Tyrown believes his creativity is limitless and seeks to prove this by taking on complex projects that allow him to grow.  

I’m Sylvia Wilson, an emerging curator at Martumili Art Gallery. The first exhibition I curated was in 2021 with fellow artists Robina Willams and Corban Williams. Paper Wangka (Paper Story in Martu) exhibition unearthed paper artwork treasures from Martumili collection as a professional development project for us three emerging curators. Since then I have lead the gallery team to curate and install a number of exhibitions including Ngapikaja (the loose translation is thingamibobs) and Mikka (bush foods). I also curated a show for Yaama Ganu Gallery in NSW in September 2023.

I love working with spaces and amazing artwork. I love going through the process of selection and coming up with themes that tie the pieces together. I get so excited to see the works we send to different galleries, stretched and hung on the walls in places like Darwin, Perth and Sydney.

A Yawuru/Bardi woman born and raised in Broome, Dalisa Pigram has worked with Marrugeku since the first production Mimi and has been Co-Artistic Director since 2008. A co-devising performer on all Marrugeku’s productions, touring extensively overseas and throughout Australia. Dalisa’s solo work Gudirr Gudirr earned an Australian Dance Award (Outstanding Achievement in Independent Dance 2014) and a Green Room Award (Best Female Performer 2014). Dalisa co-conceived Marrugeku’s Burning Daylight and Cut the Sky with Rachael Swain, co-choreographing both works with Serge Aimé Coulibaly. Together with Swain she co-directed Buru, Ngarlimbah and co-curated Marrugeku’s four International Indigenous Choreographic Labs and Burrbgaja Yalirra.

In her community, Dalisa teaches the Yawuru Language Programme at Cable Beach Primary School and is committed to the maintenance of Yawuru language and culture through the arts and education. Dalisa is co-editor of Marrugeku: Telling That Story—25 years of trans-Indigenous and intercultural exchange (Performance Research 2021).

Sharyn Egan is a Noongar woman who began creating art at the age of 37, which lead to her enrolling in a Diploma of Fine Arts at the Claremont School of Art in Perth. She completed this course in 1998 and enrolled in the Associate Degree in Contemporary Aboriginal Art at Curtin University, which she completed in 2000. In 2001 she was awarded a Bachelor of Arts (Arts) from Curtin University. She has also been awarded a Certificate VI in Training and Education in 2011. The themes in Egan’s work are informed by the experiences of her life as a Noongar woman.