Big Smart
12 April 2025 - 8 June 2025
Curator: Nicholas Currie (Mulunjali, Kuku Yalanji).
Artist(s): Ari Mills (Kuku Yalanji and Wundra), Arkie Barton (Kalkadoon), Dale Collier/Daisy (Wiradjuri), Elana Currie (Yugambeh and Kuku Yalanji), Emma Salmon (Nyikina), Peta Duncan (Torres Strait Islander), Ricky Baldwin (Gunai/Kurnai), Tarsha Davis (Kuku Yalanji), and Tristen Harwood (Ngalakgan).
Location: Incinerator Gallery
Big Smart is a group exhibition curated by Nicholas Currie (Mulunjali, Kuku Yalanji) that explores the diverse modes of pedagogy within, and from the understandings of, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. The exhibition highlights the ways in which education—formal, informal, and intergenerational—intersects with artistic practice, particularly from Indigenous perspectives. Bringing together a dynamic group of artists at different stages of their careers, the exhibition reflects the vital role of learning within community and family, showcasing how knowledge is shared, inherited, and expanded upon through artistic expression, and particularly beyond the institutional classroom.
Nicholas’ curatorial approach is deeply personal and rooted in lived experience. “The collection of art works and artists presented for this show either have taught me something or have further their learning with me,” he says. His sister, Elana Currie, is a primary school teacher, and many of the artists and community members who have shaped his life and practice are educators or engaged in broader systems of learning.
Curatorially, this exhibition is inspired by the thinking of American writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin (1924-1987), who argued that “the purpose of education is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions,” Big Smart underscores how Indigenous ways of knowing cultivate agency, resilience, and creative expression beyond colonial frameworks.
This exhibition brings together works that are newly created, or have never been publicly shown before, or are presented alongside each other for the first time. Big Smart foregrounds the power of Indigenous pedagogy, celebrating how knowledge is woven into artistic practice, community, and identity.
Ari Mills
Ari Mills is a proud Kuku Yalanji and Nangu writer and poet. They incorporate their love for community, Queerness and Black liberation in their writing to come to explore Black Queer love stories in truth telling. Ari aims to create love spaces for mob to share and grow with each other in showcasing our mobs’ creativity and innovation. Their work has been published in Nangamay Mana Djurali (Dream Gather Grow), an Indigenous Queer Anthology, and in Australian Poetry’s Best of Australian Poems 2023.
Arkie Barton
Arkie Barton is an artist, fashion and textile designer whose practice is deeply rooted in connection and community engagement. As a proud Kalkadunga and Bidjara queer woman, her arts practice draws from her connection to land and culture to engage in cultural practice through multiple disciplines. Painting from age five, she has presented her work in many exhibitions, collaborations and public art ventures, building up to her current diversification of creative practice.
Barton works across painting, textile, fashion design, and public art murals. Through further study and work experience, Arkie has developed a strong interest in how we can utilise art and creativity to support mental wellbeing and self determination within health and wellbeing spaces.
Having moved from Meanjin to Naarm seven years ago, Arkie has had the privilege to live and create as a visitor on Wurundjeri and Boonwurrung country, forging meaningful relationships with local and visiting mob through work and community engagement.
Dale Collier/Daisy
Dale Collier, also known as Daisy, is an artist and writer who embraces the humour and humility of survival and belonging in a schismatic deep-fake post-truth context. Their expanded practice fuses noise, data, installation and performance in response to the systemic effects and psychopolitics of global conditioning. While critically charged with ecosocial interruption, their work offers sustainable and spirited challenges to the depravities of discipline and the complacent carceral logistics of contemporary art. Daisy’s submergent approach and unapologetic critique forms part of an ongoing search for futures that haven’t already been redacted and/or destroyed. Their work has been exhibited/published with - Bus Projects, Kings ARI, MEMO, Un Magazine, Seventh Gallery, Rabbit Poetry Journal, The Lock-up Artspace, The Bundanon Trust, Runway Experimental Art Journal, Yapang Museum of Art and Culture, Art Gallery of South Australia Ramsay Art Prize, and The Parliament of NSW King & Wood Mallesons First Nations Art Award.
Elana Currie
Yugambeh and Kuku Yalanji . Elana is a teacher, sister and deadly one. Working with children in education, Elana upholds core values of community as supporting youth and changing futures. This is Elana’s first gallery showing.
Emma Salmon
Emma Salmon is a Nyikina artist and student based on Wurundjeri land in Naarm’s northern suburbs. Her practice spans string making, set, video, illustration and installation to explore unbroken First Nations memory, spirit and connection in urban, cyber and dream spaces.
Nicholas Currie
Nicholas Currie is a descendant of the Mulunjali Clan of the Yugambeh people of Brisbane and Beaudesert with connection to Kuku Yalanji people of North Queensland. Nicholas is known for his diverse artistic and curatorial practice both in subject and medium, from work on canvas, to murals and art installations, exploring themes of social, cultural, and personal identity. His visual vocabulary links to themes of Indigeneity, emotional responses and larger community values.
Peta Duncan
Peta Duncan is a self-taught and emerging photographer based in Melbourne, Australia. With a particular interest in photojournalism and portraiture, Peta is dedicated to capturing powerful images that tell meaningful stories. As a Torres Strait Islander, she is deeply passionate about showcasing and celebrating the beauty of her community and culture through her work.
Ricky Baldwin
Gunai/Kurnai man and Victorian elder of the year for 2024. Ricky Baldwin is a community leader, basketball coach and expert woodworker. Making artifacts , artisanal plant holders with wood burning and painting. Baldwin not only uses his time to create but teaches culture and history honestly. As a mentor to many indigenous youth Baldwin has been a collaborator, teacher and peer to many of the Victorian indigenous youth community.
Tarsha Davis
Tarsha Davis is a Kuku Yalanji and Palawa woman and multidisciplinary artist working across painting, digital art, weaving, jewelry, and textiles. Her practice is grounded in story, identity, and community, drawing on both traditional knowledge and contemporary techniques to create bold, layered narratives.
Alongside her creative practice, Tarsha has worked across the arts, community, and justice sectors, delivering and managing programs focused on improving wellbeing and access to services. This commitment extends into her design work, with commissioned pieces licensed for Our Watch’s Reconciliation Action Plan, Ovarian Cancer Australia branding, and the Write Yes campaign and First Nations Justice Team branding at GetUp!
Her work has been exhibited at Linden New Art, the Koorie Heritage Trust, and Aboriginal Exhibitions Rutherglen, with pieces held in private and permanent collections. She was awarded the RMIT Emerging Artist Award (11th Koorie Art Show) and selected for the 2024 Blak Design Program. She continues to expand her practice at the intersection of art, design, sustainability, and advocacy. Tarsha’s work invites connection through story, to place and one another. Whether through personal reflection or shared experience, she creates with intention, exploring new ways for these stories to be seen, heard, and experienced.
Tristen Harwood
Tristen Harwood is an Indigenous art critic, writer, and PhD student. He teaches art history and theory at the Victorian College of the Arts. His most recent book is Variations: A More Diverse Picture of Contemporary Art (2023), co-authored with Grace McQuilten and Anthony White. Tristen’s writing is published in The New York Times Style magazine, ArtReview, Artlink, Overland Journal, Un Magazine, The Saturday Paper, Art Monthly Australasia, Art + Australia, and others.
Friday, 11 April, 6-8pm
The opening night, with speeches and a Welcome to Country, will be held at Incinerator Gallery.
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Yarning Circle
Saturday, 17 May, 2pm
Duration: 60 minutes
Location: Incinerator Gallery
Join curator Nicholas Currie with artists from Big Smart as they yarn about their artworks in the exhibition, share knowledge through artistic practice, and discuss themes of education beyond the institutional classroom.